


The Assassin's Apprentice

by Winterlyn_Dow



Series: The Assassins Trilogy [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), game of thrones
Genre: A window into Arya's assassin training, Assassin Training, Badass Arya, Braavos, F/M, The Faceless Men, The House of Black and White, badass Jaqen, love and adventure and angst, needle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-07
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-16 13:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 61
Words: 431,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2271702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterlyn_Dow/pseuds/Winterlyn_Dow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arya Stark has the potential to become great within her order, if only she can let go of the past. Some things are easier said than done. Jaqen H'ghar is her most trusted mentor. Will his guidance help her leave her hurts behind and rise through the ranks or will he steer her down a path of self-discovery?</p><p>First in a three part series</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

**Disclaimer: GRRM owns almost all characters and their world. This is merely an homage to his fantastic story.**

**I should probably say that there are possibly spoilers for every book until _The Winds of Winter,_ whose available chapters I have not read yet. I suppose that makes this slightly A/U because anything that has occurred with the characters in WoW will not be part of the reality of this particular fic.**

* * *

The girl sat on one of the black stone benches beneath the shade of a fig tree in the courtyard garden of the House of Black and White. She was exhausted and her muscles were already becoming sore from her latest training session, which she still referred to as her dancing lesson. While this drew strange looks from some of the Faceless Men who heard her call it such, in her heart, she still held Syrio's memory close and aspired to be the water dancer he believed she was capable of becoming. _Syrio Forel, First Sword of Braavos._

Not all water dancers could boast such enviable beginnings, but she had chanced to cross paths with the greatest swordsman of all time, and not only cross paths with him, but to learn from him (this had occurred when she was almost too young to know what good fortune she had. _Almost_ ). Of all of the lessons an acolyte was meant to study under the roof of the House of Black and White, _dancing_ was definitely still her favorite.

As the girl sat on the bench, she fiddled absent-mindedly with her dark, chestnut hair which she preferred to keep short, finding it more practical to do so. It had been five or six moons since she had cut it up to her chin, her preferred length—long enough to tuck behind her ears but short enough to make combing it quick and easy (when she bothered at all). The thick mop grew fast and was now brushing her shoulders, the length at which it began to show a wave and a bit of loose curl. It also sometimes flew in her eyes while she trained; _an annoyance_.

_Time to cut it again,_ she thought as she brushed the damp strands from her eyes, and then pulled her dagger from her boot. The blade was the sharpest of the three she carried these days. The girl grabbed her hair into a bundle, preparing to saw it off unceremoniously. Jaqen placed his hand lightly on hers, staying it for a moment.

"A girl should grow her hair long," he told her, reaching for the bundle of her thick tresses and freeing them from her grip. He tucked a stray lock behind her ear. "Men like to see a girl with flowing hair."

"What do I care what men want to see?" the fierce girl spat. "Long hair is stupid. It takes too long to brush and arrange, it gets caught in things, and it gets in the way during a fight."

"A girl thinks only of the bad but has not considered the good," Jaqen chided, giving her _that look_.

"Good? What good?" Arya scoffed. "All that trouble so some bloody man might think I'm pretty? Any man close enough to consider my looks probably isn't going to live long enough to be concerned about the length of my hair. Why would I care, anyway?"

_So young,_ her mentor thought, smiling slightly to himself.

The girl missed his look, occupied now with her own thoughts. She had a brief memory of her sister Sansa in King's Landing, sitting still as a statue on a stool while her maid arranged her long, auburn hair in the Southron style she adopted shortly after their arrival in the city. It took an hour at least. Arya could never imagine sitting still so long, just for some silly looping braids and hair ornaments. What a waste of time! Still, the memory brought a sharp pang with it, a feeling she might have identified as _the sadness of loss_ , had she allowed herself to dwell on it any longer. Arya didn't enjoy feelings any more than she enjoyed sitting still for an hour of grooming though, so she brushed her sister's face away and focused on what Jaqen was saying.

"An enemy sees a lovely girl walking toward him and appreciates her beauty; he is perhaps _lulled_ by it. He does not reach for his sword. An enemy sees a _warrior_ striding toward him and he is _not_ lulled. He prepares to fight."

"I'm not scared of an enemy preparing to fight. I don't need to trick a man to beat him," she declared, insulted.

Jaqen smiled at her a moment, a look she knew well. It was a look that was born of a combination of fondness and consternation. It was the same look her father used to give her. _And Jon_ , she thought, feeling a bit sad then.

"Perhaps not. Perhaps a girl is very brave indeed, but a wise man uses all the gifts he is given. A wise girl should learn to do the same," he advised. "A girl must have _sense_ as well as courage."

She frowned.

"Well, I'd rather focus on my skills with a blade because all the hair in the world won't make me beautiful," the young acolyte sniffed dismissively.

"No," the Lorathi assassin agreed, "it is not a girl's hair that makes her beautiful."

He tilted his head and regarded her with a look that was… _indecipherable._ This time when he smiled at her, she had a sense he meant something entirely different; something she did not quite understand. She bit her lip as she considered his words but found they made her feel strange. She misliked the feeling, and so put the words out of her mind.

This was to be their last moment together for a time. Jaqen was sailing somewhere, on a mission; something he could not or would not discuss with her beyond his usual prating about doing his duty, serving the Many-Faced god, and the like.

"Jaqen," his apprentice began tentatively. When he turned to face her, sheathing his sword, his eyebrows lifted in inquiry.

"Yes, child?"

His apprentice bristled a bit at that. She hadn't considered herself a child since she left Winterfell to go south with her father, though she had to admit, perhaps she hadn't known anything about anything back then. But she certainly hadn't been a _child_ since surviving on the streets of King's Landing after… well, _after._ And then her journey up the King's Road in the company of the Night's Watch, her time in Harrenhal, her cross-country escape with Hot Pie and Gendry ( _Gendry! Gods!)_ , her brief sojourn with the Brotherhood without Banners, her time as part-captive, part-outlaw side-kick of the Hound, her voyage across the sea to Braavos, and her apprenticeship in the House of Black and White which had begun over two years prior—surely all these things qualified her as something more than a _child_. Would the Faceless Men allow a mere child give the gift of death?

Jaqen's face was still frozen in curiosity but his fingers wrapping and unwrapping themselves around the hilt of his sword betrayed his impatience and brought the girl back around to what it was she had wanted to ask him.

"How long will you be away this time?"

His look softened and he placed his hand gently on her shoulder.

"A man cannot say," he told her. "Awhile, to be sure."

His apprentice nodded, feeling inexplicably sad. She thought it was perhaps because once again, she was losing her pack to become a lone wolf.

_Don't be stupid_ , she scowled inwardly. _You don't need a pack. You're not a wolf. You're no one._

After her master had sailed away, the girl had time to reflect on some of the lessons he had tried to impart. There were many teachers and mentors in the House of Black and White but Jaqen H'ghar understood her better than most, probably better than anyone she'd ever known, apart from her father and Jon. It made what he attempted to teach her especially important to her. As part of her service as an acolyte of the House of Black and White, she collected offerings and lit candles around the still pool in the main temple chamber. It was during these duties when she noted her own reflection in the dark waters, candles imparting just enough light that she could see her own face looking back at her. Her hair was hanging down as she leaned over the water and she decided Jaqen was right about wearing it long. If men were so stupid that they could be distracted by some long curls, then she should not be so stubborn as to give up the advantage. She resolved to grow her hair out that day.

Over time, the other acolytes had taken to calling her the Cat. It was a name that harkened back to her days as the girl who called herself Cat of the Canals, selling the bounty of the sea from a cart owned by Brusco the fishmonger; a name that identified the role she played as she perfected her Braavosi and learned how to _not be Arya Stark_ ; a name she used while listening for secrets and mastering coming and going without drawing attention. Like a cat, she was graceful and lithe. Like a cat, she had her sharp claws, though in her case, they were made of steel and had proven more lethal than the claws of the alley cats that had trailed behind her during her days of selling cockles to the sailors in port. Like a cat, she enjoyed being stroked from time to time but mostly kept to herself, coming and going as she pleased, needing no one.

All Faceless Men were known for their stealth but the Cat had a natural aptitude for slipping in and out of rooms without detection (she supposed it was because she had started _sneaking_ at such an early age. How else could a girl avoid what seemed like hours and hours of excruciating embroidery lessons?) Her talent had earned her the grudging respect of her peers and praise from the Kindly Man, principal elder of their order. When moving around undetected, however, it was never the words of those in the House of Black and White she heard in her head, urging her to blend; to be unseen. Instead, she heeded Syrio's voice. _Quiet as a shadow. Calm as still water. Quick as a deer. Fear cuts deeper than swords._ She suspected they knew, or the Kindly Man at least, that she wasn't always exactly _no one_ all the time. Sometimes she was a water dancer. Sometimes she was a wolf. Sometimes, after waking from a nightmare, she was a mouse again, if only for a moment. And sometimes, when she was alone and saying her well-worn prayer, she was Arya Stark.

With her master gone and only her own burning lust for vengeance and blood to guide her (with occasional direction from the Kindly Man), the girl dedicated herself _completely_ to her study of the various arts particular to the servants of the House of Black and White. When others rested, she drilled and practiced with her blades. When others lingered over their meals, she gobbled and gulped and then worked on perfecting her sleight of hand. When others spoke in Braavosi, she replied in whichever language was her weakest, often baffling the younger acolytes with her rough Dothraki and rudimentary Lorathi.

When others dreamed, she lay awake, staring into the darkness of her cell, seeing the faces of those she longed for; the faces of those lost to her or so far away that they might as well have been. _Her father and mother. Her brothers. Her sister._

_Nymeria._

_Jaqen._

Eighteen moons came and went before Jaqen returned to find this Cat, now nearly six and ten; a woman grown in place of the skinny, defiant girl he left behind in Braavos. In his absence, his apprentice had grown more beautiful than he could have envisioned.

More beautiful and more deadly.


	2. Chapter 2

If her father were alive, he would surely call her _Lyanna_ without thinking, before remembering Lyanna had breathed her last in her bed of blood many years earlier. He would pause to consider the memory a moment before realizing that this was his _daughter_ , grown up fierce and lovely, so much like her aunt at that same age that they could pass for twins. Arya would probably never know how much she resembled Eddard Stark's sister since anyone who was like to remember Lyanna Stark was dead and gone or so very far away that it was doubtful her path would ever cross theirs.

Jaqen did not know this she-wolf who had died before Arya Stark was born so he did not recognize the storm-grey eyes with their long, dark lashes as belonging to anyone other than this Cat; this newly minted assassin. Her thick, wavy hair, now swaying in the middle of her back, did not call to mind another dark, braided mane wreathed in winter roses. Never having met the lady whose tragic end was yet another chapter in the bloody history of that earlier rebellion in Westeros, he did not see those high cheekbones under blushing skin and think to himself, s _he is so like another_ , as a certain Targaryen prince would have done had he not had his own tragic end, dying with the name on his lips of which Arya's face surely would have reminded him.

To Jaqen, she was a new creation, striking and exceptional, as much for her spirit and aptitude as for the womanly form she now boasted. He found himself hoping she had mastered the art of wearing a new face convincingly because she might find her natural appearance cumbersome in times she was required to see but not be seen. In the space of her sojourn with the House of Black and White, she had grown up and evolved into the sort of woman who was noticed and while this could be useful in some ways, to be sure, he felt certain those ways were not the ones in which this girl aspired to excel.

* * *

Jaqen had returned to Braavos and immediately upon docking, leapt as quickly as he could from the gangplank of _The Dragon’s Daughter_ , grateful to be standing once again on dry land. It was the first time in months the ground did not rock beneath his feet. Without hesitation, he made for the temple of his order, meaning to apprise the council of the success of his mission and to learn of any news since his absence that might be of interest. He was also curious to know if a girl had remained faithful to her training and was still among the acolytes of the order. He believed her natural abilities and her make up were very well suited to the life of a Faceless Man, but he also knew that there was the difficulty of the life she held onto, no matter how surreptitiously. It was conceivable that in his absence she had chosen to leave to pursue her Winter dreams (mostly revolving around revenge), finally accepting one of the frequent offers made to her by the Kindly Man to release her from her training.

As the Lorathi wound through the streets and alleys of Braavos, he continued to think of his apprentice and felt a sense of unease as he admitted to himself that it was possible he would not find her in the temple; indeed, she may have quit Braavos altogether.

Upon passing through the ebony and weirwood doors, he was greeted by his petite colleague, a woman Arya had taken to calling "the waif." Though her manner was naturally calm, Jaqen could tell his comrade was pleased at his return.

"The others will want to speak with you immediately," she told him quietly, turning to lead the way. He followed without a word, as was their way. Restraint in the House of Black and White was paramount, as it served to preserve the peace of those who entered the dark rooms in search of solace.

The conclave detained him for a little over an hour, interested to know the full details of his dealings while outside of their walls. The Kindly Man's eyes looked keenly at the newly arrived assassin as he discussed a bit of news he had heard while abroad in Westeros. The news related to a grey girl named Arya Stark who had been wed to a Northern lord. She was said to have disappeared into the snow one night, carried off by a servant or a prince, depending on the version. Some said she had died, leaving her claim to her husband, a Bolton. Some said she had died long before she disappeared; before the marriage, even, and that this left the Boltons with no claim whatsoever. After his tales, the council informed him of the business of the order, successful missions, pending requests, and the progress of those striving to join them as Faceless Men. As the one known now as the Cat was his own recruit, and he her primary master, her progress was discussed with Jaqen in greater detail. It seemed that her training had progressed significantly and her skills were substantial, being one of their better acolytes with a sword and unmatched with throwing knives. She had even shown remarkable skill with Dothraki weaponry, the whip and the arakh. It was only the Kindly Man's uncertainty about her ability to dedicate herself to the life completely that stopped him from initiating her into the order. The elder was set on delaying the girl’s final trial.

"In some ways, she is still a highborn lady of Westeros," the Kindly Man concluded.

Jaqen chuckled lightly at that, disagreeing with his brother.

"No," he said, shaking his head, his white forelock tumbling over his eye, "a girl was never that."

"Just so," the Kindly Man replied. "Nevertheless, she still clings to some part of that life and until she chooses to fully embrace this calling, I cannot pass her into the order. She must demonstrate her dedication before she is allowed to earn her face."

Jaqen nodded his understanding, bowing slightly to the council as he rose from his seat, saying, “Valar morghulis.” He then left the chamber to pay his respects to the god of the temple. Upon his arrival at the pool in the center of the main chamber, he lit a candle, bowing his head in reverence, thankful for another safe return home. Afterwards, he wandered the halls, nodding his greeting to his brothers as he passed them, searching for a wolf who was unable to become no one.

He walked into the large training room, finding it full of acolytes. Their session today was set up as a sort of tourney. The apprentices, all boys save one dark-haired girl, were paired off two by two, fighting until their master determined one had bested the other, delivering either three significant wounding touches or one touch considered a death blow—to the neck, the heart, or a strike that would be likely to remove a limb. It seemed as if the tourney had been going on for some time, and was in the final phases. The girl was still competing with perhaps three other acolytes, her face colored with exertion and the sweat upon her brow causing some of the hair which had come loose from her braid to plaster her forehead.

In the end, she was bested by a larger opponent, a boy called the Bear by the other acolytes. He was near the end of his time as an apprentice, almost ready to be fully inducted into the order. Despite her quickness and balance, she was undone by her challenger's brute strength and her own exhaustion. She did not accept defeat graciously, scowling at the boy who looked, truth be told, a little nervous at her displeasure. The other acolytes pounded the large boy on his back and congratulated him on his victory, walking as a group to replace their blunted blades in the wall racks and leaving together in search of refreshment.

The Cat shuffled behind the group, replacing her tourney sword, apart. She swiped the sweat from her brow, scowling at the quickly retreating backs of her peers, and then picked up a slender blade from its rack. Quickly turning, she raised her steel and took a swipe at the air. She had intended to train further, to do a little _needle work,_ just as Syrio had taught her, but it was then that she noticed a familiar face in the corner of the room, studying her from under lifted brows.

"Jaqen!" she cried, dropping her sword arm. "You're back? _Seven hells_! When did you arrive? How was the journey? Did you see any pirates on the seas? Where did you go for so long?"

He raised his hands as if to buffet her barrage of words and laughed as he replied, "A man will tell all but first, he must work the kinks out of his muscles. The journey has left a man stiff and restless. Perhaps a girl would care to _dance_ with him? Of course, if you need to rest after your training…"

An impish grin appeared on her face and she said, "No, I don't need to rest. Are you sure you really wish to _dance_ with me? After such a long journey and all, maybe _you_ need to rest first…"

"A girl has grown cocky since a man left this land," he remarked. "A man wonders, is this confidence or merely arrogance?"

She looked up at him with wide, innocent eyes but there was a subtle smirk playing on her lips as she said, "Pick up your sword and let's find out."


	3. Chapter 3

Though he had watched her cross swords with her peers only moments before, Jaqen was surprised by her competence and finesse with the slender _Bravos_ blade she favored. He had intended only to stretch his tight muscles and test her skill (perhaps giving her a small but _well-deserved_ lesson in humility in the process), but he found himself caught off-guard by her quickness and her ability to anticipate his moves. The assassin was perturbed to discover he needed to _exert_ himself in order to answer her challenge, something made painfully clear when she _thwacked_ his upper arm neatly with the flat of her blade, grinning uncontrollably at his grimace of pain and the shocked expression that followed. After a pause to reassess this skirmish, he changed his tactics to reflect a more aggressive assault style. The girl demonstrated how well-earned was the feline name bestowed upon her during his absence, sliding artfully beneath and around his thrusts, parrying with her slim blade even as she managed to slink behind him. She exhibited a patience in her sword play that she did not seem capable of in life. Her moves were a graceful dance; a ballet of singing steel and fluid motion which, when combined, were a thing of delicate, frightening beauty. He eventually disarmed her and forced her to yield but it was not without effort. Or admiration.

He bowed to her in appreciation of her skill and they replaced their swords in their proper racks. She pursed her lips with mild annoyance and then muttered to herself about needing more practice. It was plain that she demanded of herself certain victory, perhaps not a reasonable goal in the acolyte's practice of sword-play, but a necessary one for the warrior marching into battle or the assassin who desires to return home after performing the bidding of the Many-Faced god.

"A man has grown old and slow of late," he sighed, rubbing the arm that was like to show an ugly bruise by nightfall.

"Slow? If you're slow, what does that make _me_? You _beat_ me," she growled in irritation. "And _you've_ been cooped up on a ship for months, probably eating wormy bread and drinking rum."

"A man has been training with his sword since before a girl was born. Many men have received the gift of death by a man's sword and most provided much less challenge than you did today," he responded, tilting his head slightly as he considered her. "Perhaps the years are creeping up on a man, slowing his steps more than he has realized."

"No," she insisted, "you're not old. I've improved and you're still hampered by your long journey. You were gone for so long, you don't realize how much practice I've had. I've spent loads of time with my dancing masters. Even with all that, I was barely a challenge."

He did not correct her perception, teasing her instead, saying, "So a girl has learned to fight skillfully. Has she also learned to flatter a man with what he wishes to hear, to disarm him and charm him out of his secrets?"

"I'm not trying to flatter you, Jaqen," she sniffed in an annoyed tone, rolling her eyes. "I meant what I said, and though I _have_ learned a bit about flattery, it's certainly not my strength. I still find it much easier to learn a man's secrets by holding a blade to his throat than by charming him."

He laughed uproariously at that last, his eyes dancing as he remarked, "Just so." After a moment, finding his mirth infectious, she began laughing herself. It was an unguarded, throaty sound that pleased his ear, nearly as much as her flushed cheeks and slender, white throat pleased his eye.

"A girl has begun to wear her hair long," the Lorathi observed quietly after their laughter died away. "Could it be that a man's advice was actually heeded?"

"I always heed your advice," the girl assured him, then, upon hearing his slight snort, amended, "though I may not always follow it _precisely_."

"Has this particular advice proven useful?"

"I don't know, really," she answered honestly, then added, "No one mistakes me for a boy anymore."

Jaqen reached over her shoulder, lifting her heavy braid and holding it loosely in his palm as the smile faded from his lips. After a moment, he allowed the thick plait to fall against her chest and seemed to look through her as he remarked softly, "No, a man does not suppose anyone will ever make that mistake again."

She thought that she could detect a small note of sadness in Jaqen's voice, but his eyes betrayed nothing. Her competence at reading the intention behind the words of others had improved along with her other skills but like flattery, it was not her strongest talent. The Cat often found herself lamenting that the truth could not be carved out from behind people's eyes with an arakh, though this was not one of those times. When she attempted to probe the implication behind Jaqen's tone, she found herself reluctant to look too deeply. He was nearly impossible to read, anyway, but she felt an uncomfortable sense of rising panic when she considered his possible meaning.

She stuffed the feeling down deep inside, along with the other emotions that tried to rise up within her on occasion. She only ever allowed herself to feel anger: anger and hatred, and _only_ these, despite the Kindly Man's best efforts to quell them. He had tried in vain to teach her that her raw anger and boundless hatred were just another face for her fear, but she scoffed at this. She knew about fear. _Fear cuts deeper than swords._ What she felt was not her fear dressed up as some mummer's version of rage; it was the kindling that smoldered inside her, stoking her rage, keeping it alive. Sometimes she felt as if she were filled with wildfire, unquenchable, burning so hot that she could not contain it. Her hatred was the fuel that spurred her on in her training, long after the others were at their meal or in their beds. It was the reason she wasn't entirely able to become _no one_ , remaining still the savage she-wolf deep within her heart. She was the twin of Lyanna Stark not just in countenance and form, but in spirit, yet better equipped to channel her wildness and desire; the same wildness and desire which in Lyanna's case had become a recklessness leading to her own ruin. Lyanna Stark had allowed love to lead to the destruction of all she cherished most. Arya Stark, with so much bitter purpose and the advantage of the lessons she had learned within these walls, would rely on her hatred to lead to the destruction of all that had caused her grief, thus satisfying her desperate, burning need for vengeance.

This was the idea that had taken root in her long ago, and lingered still though she knew it was at odds with the creed of the order in whose debt she remained. She struggled mightily against this selfishness and tried to give herself up completely to the Many-Faced god, but the wildfire within her always burned away that resolve. She wanted to serve the order _and_ her own dark need; to become a Faceless Man _and_ have her revenge. She had debts to pay in Westeros, and a gift to give each of the people she named in a hoarse whisper before she closed her eyes at night. _Ser Gregor, Dunsen, Raff the Sweetling, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei._

_Valar morghulis._

Why must she choose? The question bounced inside of her head for the thousandth time. She had mostly resolved her obsession with fairness but the childish notion of equity died hard and sometimes, she still felt if she only pleaded her case with enough eloquence, some allowance would be made for her. She had yet to find the proper words to win the approval she needed for the quest that burned inside of her and so her allegiance remained torn and her loyalties divided.

_Obedience is a choice,_ the Kindly Man often reminded her.

_But how was she to choose?_

"Jaqen," his apprentice began suddenly, "Do you… Do you only serve the Many-Faced god?"

He considered her face with his own mild expression, waiting for her to elaborate.

"I mean," she continued, "do you ever do anything for _yourself_?"

His features exhibited minor amusement as he answered her, "A man eats, a man sleeps, a man may seek pleasures where he finds them."

"No, I mean… I mean, what if someone insults you? Or takes what is yours? What if someone betrays you or does some harm to you? Would you… Have you ever just…"

His amusement became more obvious at her halting speech and he lazily dropped to a low bench, reclining as he waited for her to complete her inquiry.

"Could you just kill someone because _you_ wanted them dead?" she finally asked. "Without a contract, I mean? Someone who wasn't an immediate threat to your life?"

Jaqen sat up, crossing his arms over his chest. His gaze turned sharp as he narrowed his eyes and regarded the girl.

"A girl is thinking of old enemies," the assassin pronounced after a moment.

She began then to thoughtfully chew her lower lip, a habit that had never been completely lost despite enduring some stinging blows meant to drive it from her.

"I just wondered if service in the order meant you could _never_ do anything for your own purposes," she clarified.

Jaqen sighed.

"Service to the Many-Faced god means a man's _own_ _purposes_ are the same as the order's."

"Always?" she pressed in a small voice, reminding him of the child who had whispered that first name to him; the name of a man to whom he had dealt death. For the Red god _._

_For her_ , some distant voice in him whispered.

His gaze softened and he had no wish to hurt her but he also needed for her to understand. In the service of the Many-Faced god, there was no room for personal vendetta. His answer was firm but his voice gentle.

"A man has said."

She looked away from him, her eyes staring off, examining something only she could see; something far away. _A parade of faces_ , if he had to guess about it; a string of Westerosi, some common men who had done uncommonly abhorrent things, and some of royal blood who had reshaped her life into the form it took today. But what was that form? Who was she now? Half dispassionate assassin, half ferocious avenger? A fraction indifferent cat, a fraction snarling wolf? Part woman longing for a past that would never return, part child grieving the future that would never be?

She was some amalgamation of all these, he felt, and more besides. However, he was certain that the one thing she was not was the one thing the order demanded she be: no one.


	4. Chapter 4

After her defeat at the hands of _a man,_ the apprentice was expected to work in the kitchens, helping Umma to prepare the small feast requested by the Kindly Man to mark the return of a brother of the house. The cook would be glad of her help today, as there were like to be more dishes and those more complex than the typical supper eaten by the servants of the House of Black and White. Celebration after the success of an important mission was not common so the preparations had the girl curious about the details of this particular commission of Jaqen's.

She left the training room to do her duty but not before reminding Jaqen, "You promised to tell all. I haven't heard a bit about your trip or where you went. I expect you to fulfill your promise later!"

He nodded, saying that he would tell her as much of the tale as she cared to hear when next they met. As she departed, though, the assassin wondered what exactly he should tell her about his visit to Old Town and the Riverlands and how much of what he learned there should remain hidden. Her conflicting feelings about her path to becoming a member of the order had never been more apparent to him. While he was away, Jaqen had feared that she might have left Braavos to pursue her dream of justice for those Arya Stark lost in another life, but when he found her still studying among the acolytes, he began to wonder if she had somehow managed to lay that dream to rest. He discovered only moments before that the blood lust still burned deep within her breast. It was proving harder to extinguish than he would have believed when he encountered that small, wrathful child on the King's Road so long ago. He recalled her, wispy bit of a girl that she was, whispering her bitter prayer to the wind, trying to call down the wrath of all the gods on the heads of her enemies as the dying embers of the night fires glowed and cooled; a lonely, vengeful girl pretending to be a boy as she trudged north among the criminals and outcasts and orphans without better prospects, on their way to join the noble band of black brothers serving the realm on a great wall of ice. The memory made him sad. She had been so wild and fierce yet still she had so much hope; hope of seeing her family again; hope of exacting her revenge; hope that someone would take care of her and soothe her hurts (her mother, her brothers, her friends) if only she could hold on long enough to find them.

Jaqen had seen the gods deliver her blow after blow. Any one of these might have caused her to crumple and simply give up her struggle but she did not. Yet undeniably, she had been changed by each of these calamities and even more so by her tutelage in the House of Black and White. The vestiges of hope still remained, but should she wish to take the final step and accept her place as a servant of the Many-Faced god, she would need to shed them. Whether this would be to her ultimate benefit or detriment, he was no longer sure. What he had learned about the Westerosi war and the state of the North was certain to confuse his apprentice about her choices even more and he was not sure which was the greater sin: to reveal what he knew and cause her more doubt about her destiny or to withhold information that might allow her greater control over it?

* * *

Upon entering the kitchens, the girl was met with Umma's reprimand for her lateness.

"I know they call you the Cat," the cook complained gruffly, "but does that mean you have to keep a cat's time and come and go as you please?"

The girl knew the cook's manner to be brusque but for all that, they really got along quite well. The Cat appreciated the older woman's dry humor, which became more apparent once the acolyte finally mastered the Braavosi tongue. For the hundredth time, she thought to herself how Hot Pie would love working in this kitchen under the direction of Umma, who was really an excellent cook and baker.

"Sorry, Umma," she apologized. "My combat training went long."

"Humph!" the woman responded. "Combat training, was it? Is that what you call it when you flirt with a certain Lorathi over crossed blades?"

_Flirt?_ the girl thought, confused. _With a Lorathi? Does she mean Jaqen? Preposterous!_

The cook continued fussing while she nimbly chopped several tiny, brownish peppers.

"If you spent half as much time doing your duty as you do _dancing_ with that assassin, you might have already been an assassin in your own right!"

"Umma, I don't know what you mean," the girl said, truly baffled. "Jaqen hasn't even been here these past eighteen moons and when he is, I fight with him because _he's_ the best and I want to learn everything I can from him so one day _I_ can be the best. _And I don't flirt_!"

It was such an odd thought that the girl wasn't sure what to do with the strange, twisty feeling it left in her. She had never had any sort of stupid romantic notions about anyone, much less Jaqen. She found herself concerned that if Umma thought such a thing was possible, maybe others saw it that way as well. Did _Jaqen_ think she was flirting with him? She felt awkward and worried the more she thought of it.

Jaqen was not quite a brother nor a father but was perhaps the closest thing she'd had to either since Ser Ilyn had obeyed the order of that vile, repulsive Joffery and taken her father's head with Lord Stark's own sword. She had a huge, endless, aching hole where her heart used to be, consumed bit by bit as she lost those who defined and shaped her life: Jon, when he left her for the Wall, took the first little bit. Then, Nymeria. She perhaps hadn't realized how much at the time, but Nymeria's banishment had cost her dearly. Then, of course, her father, her mother and Robb. Later, Hot Pie and Gendry, though she was more angry with them than sad, since they were alive and chose to abandon her. When Jaqen was with her, the hole filled, just a little. He couldn't be everything she lacked, but he was all she had.

Arya had no interest in marrying, _ever_. When she stretched her mind forth into the future, all she saw for herself was blood and steel, never a husband or children. Never a home. She could not feel desire for those things, not when her energies were so consumed in her daily tasks for the order and her training. Not when her nights were filled with wolf dreams and her few spare moments with visions of putting a dagger through Queen Cersei's eye or plunging her sword through Ser Ilyn's heart. The girl had passed from childhood into womanhood within the walls of the temple of Him with Many Faces. She hadn't had dealings with boys and men beyond those who trained her, the other acolytes, those she used as part of her disguise in her clandestine assignments, and those whom she planned to kill. There was no one to tempt her thoughts away from her goals; no one to turn her mind toward those silly, flowery notions. There was no one she thought of _that way_ , except maybe Gendry, and then only for a few seconds after waking up from a very rare dream (a dream in which he would put his rough hand against her cheek and call her "M'lady" and she would tell him he was stupid and he would laugh). Even then, she tried to push those half-formed feelings away the instant she remembered where she was, and where _he_ was, and _why_ they were where they were.

"Here," Umma chirped, interrupting her thoughts to hand her a spoon, "stir the broth and then add those mussels."

* * *

That night, the acolytes in their soft robes of black and white drifted in and took their places at the large table, all but the few tapped to serve at dinner. The Cat, having helped to prepare dinner, had done her duty for the evening and was allowed to sit and sup with the Faceless Men. Jaqen suppressed an amused smile when he caught Arya scowling at the large boy who had bested her in the training tourney earlier. The boy had been assigned to serve that night and attempted to hand a glass of watered wine to a the still spiteful girl who muttered under her breath to him. She spoke too softly for Jaqen to hear, or anyone for that matter, aside from the girl herself and the one for whom the words were meant. The muscular boy jumped back at her quiet expression, a look of concern shaping his features. Perhaps he was less ready to be inducted into the order than Jaqen and the rest of the council previously believed. It seems he had not fully mastered his fear, or his face.

Though he couldn't hear his apprentice, the Lorathi was adept at reading lips. She spoke Braavosi to the boy, saying, "It's not what's in that cup that I want. I have a thirst for another contest. Perhaps this time, we can see who is stealthiest. Or fastest with throwing blades. _Or both_." The implication was that she might creep up upon him in a darkened corridor and demonstrate her skill with the knives for which she was renowned amongst the apprentices. Jaqen believed it was merely bravado, a way to assuage the vexation and embarrassment pent up inside over her inability to best the boy with her tourney sword earlier, but her brother clearly believed the threat behind her words. Jaqen would have to ask the other masters what this little Cat had done during his absence to engender such apprehension amongst her fellows.

The waif led the prayer before the meal, acolytes and Faceless Men alike dipping their countenances, both real and false, in reverence. Soon after, they were eating and conversing. The girl loved the camaraderie of this time of day. The talk around her was friendly for the most part, and she still marveled sometimes at the fact that she could challenge the Kindly Man or Jaqen with questions and they would answer her honestly. She could discuss poisons and their effects on the body, swordplay, or the fastest way to kill a man over her broth and bread and no one judged her or chastised her for not being a _proper lady_. There were things she gave up to place herself in the service of the Many-Faced god to be sure, but had she not gained just as much? For all the times she felt bound and constrained by the requirements of her apprenticeship and the demands of the Kindly Man that she leave Arya Stark and all she loved behind, there were the times that she remembered that _Arya Stark_ was never truly free, either. The restrictions placed on her as the daughter of a powerful lord of the Seven Kingdoms were legion, and would likely have worsened as she aged. Here, she was told she must forget who she loved, who she hated, and to whom she longed to show the _pointy end_ of Needle but in Westeros… There, at nearly six and ten, she would be told what to wear, how and with whom to speak, and who to marry.

She closed her eyes and let her mind drift across the Narrow Sea, imagining a world in which she had never left King's Landing; a world in which she was managed, handled, and used as collateral; a world in which powerful men who bore her no love would choose who shared her bed, whose children she was to bear, and how her days might be occupied until they had all been spent. She shuddered, and her eyes flew open to see Jaqen appraising her keenly from his seat, arranged across the table and several spaces up from her own. She was sitting with the acolytes at the lower end of the table while Jaqen had a place of honor near the head. Still, from that distance, she could read the concern in his expression, subtle though it was. Then the Kindly Man spoke to him and her mentor erased all emotion from his face as he turned to reply. The Cat went back to her plate, vowing once again to push Westeros from her mind, at least for the duration of the feast.


	5. Chapter 5

Having exhausted herself with her sword and her service all day, the girl found it laborious to keep her eyes from closing as the feast neared its end. The lull of soft voices in conversation punctuated by occasional delicate laughter, the embrace of the warmth of the room and the fullness of her belly all conspired to dull her awareness and deliver her to the shadowy realm of unconscious reverie. She fought the heaviness of her lids, winning the battle three, then four times but finally succumbed. The apprentice slowly tilted her head back against her chair as if she were staring at the juncture where the wall met the low ceiling across the room. When the thick apex of her braid pressed into the wooden top rail of her seat, she felt as if she awoke instantly, the smell of men and steel faint in her flared nostrils.

She looked over her shoulder and through the trees, seeing a hundred pairs of bright eyes flashing back at her, awaiting her command. When the first shouts rang into the night, curses cutting through the sound of rustling leaves and the calls of night birds, she lifted her head toward the stars and howled, long and deep. Then a young boy's piercing cry collided with the unmistakable sound of steel meeting steel and she sprang from her crouch with a blinding acceleration that brought her from the edge of the forest to the steps of a wooden structure in a blaze of fur and snarls and terrifying intention.

Two men battled at the door: one wiry with a cunning face, wearing mismatched and dented plate over rags, committed to slaughter with an inhuman snarl curling over his rotten teeth; the other, notably larger, looming and dark, infuriated and bare chested, grunting as each blow of his great-sword crashed down on his foe, determined to protect; to defend. She watched for one fleeting moment, seeing that neither was a great swordsman, but both were driven by a savage need to prevail.

The sounds of a child's wailing drew her away from the scene in the doorway and she lunged, feeling her destination before she saw it, using the sound in the darkness as a compass to guide her, just as a blind girl had been taught once, grasping the filthy man by his throat and wrenching it out almost before she even saw the child whose clothes at which the dying man had been tearing. The girl's small face looked up at her from the ground, great round eyes full of fright and wonder as the dying outlaw breathed his last next to her. She lowered her head to sniff child's hair, filling her mind with the scent of her innocence; the scent of the defenseless. Almost instantly, her cousins were doing their work, attacking the attackers; feasting on warm flesh amid surprised screams and the gasping, choking gurgles of those whose mouths were too full of blood to shriek their fear into the night.

She padded back to the house, seeing the large man drive his sword point through the wiry man's heart, pushing it further and further until their faces were so close, they could have kissed. The impaled man's open mouth became slack, his eyes lifeless as one last rasp crawled up through his throat and then the only thing keeping him from crumpling to the wooden floorboards of the platform was the strength in the arms of the brawny man wielding the sword. A moment later, it had been wrenched free, boot in the chest of the brigand forcing the corpse to slide off with a sickly sound and fall to the ground.

Amid the shrieks and weeping, the sounds of dying and feasting and howls, the man turned his gaze upon the large wolf who had saved those he was charged with protecting, and she saw his eyes, blazing blue and familiar. His gaze deepened and she met it, unflinching; knowing.

A hand grasped her shoulder and she started, giving an abbreviated gasp and seeing fathomless bronze eyes, piercing her own. It took her a second longer than it should have to understand where she was and what must have just happened.

_A dream,_ she realized, thinking it to herself. _I fell asleep at the feast. It was just a dream._

_A wolf dream._

"A girl is tired," Jaqen stated quietly, "and should retire to her cell."

Her heart quickened at his tone and his expression. He was exhibiting the utmost discretion, an almost inordinate amount of control, and it made her wonder if she had… had _said_ something or done something that would give cause for the priests and acolytes to be suspicious, or disappointed, or derisive of her. How long had she been dreaming?

Jaqen took her elbow firmly in his hand, forcing her to rise from her chair, and led her out of the warm room into the darkened corridor. The others were drifting away, this way and that, and he waited until they had almost reached her cell before he spoke.

"A girl must be more careful," he intoned with an urgency. "A girl must be _no one_."

"I know," she said in a tired voice.

"No, Arya Stark, you do _not_ know. You do not _understand."_

There was something in his voice, in his use of _her name_ that drew her up short, causing her to pause and look uncertainly at his face, her parted lips drawing in a small breath that was a question. He comprehended, sensed the tight fear that gripped her heart at his words, and he was glad of it. She needed to understand—this was no matter for joking; no matter for playful flippancy.

"Rule your face," he continued. "Rule your words. Rule your intentions."

Old lessons, all, and ones she had been taught within weeks of her arrival in the House of Black and White, though they had taken her longer to master. Perhaps even still she had not mastered them. But he meant something by repeating the mantra, and not just a reminder of her shortcomings. There was a caution behind his words, a crucial warning that her mind was unable to latch onto and decipher. But one thing the girl knew was that Jaqen was never needlessly anxious. The knowledge filled her with foreboding.

Before she could press him on his meaning, he was gone.

_Quick as a snake. Swift as a deer. Quiet as a shadow._

* * *

 

The waif rapped the girl's knuckles with the heavy hilt of a dagger she produced with merciless efficiency, immediately replacing it within the folds of her robes with a quickness that rendered it no more than a blur to the Cat's eyes.

"Ow!" the girl cried, rubbing her hand with a frown.

The precise chemistry of rendering effective poisons from plants and minerals required focus, the waif reminded her, and focus was something the acolyte seemed to lack today.

"Do you want to end up flavoring some man's wine with a concoction that will loosen his bowels and sit him astride his privy for a night? Do you want to be the Faceless Man renown for rendering men's bowels to water rather than giving the gift of death?" the waif chastised her in High Valyrian. "Perhaps those who lack the funds to pray for their enemies' deaths will have enough to hire you to upset their digestion for a while."

"No! I want to be a master of poisons. I want to be a master of all ways to give the gift," the girl insisted grimly, in near perfect High Valyrian. Her accent had improved greatly in the past year when she applied herself more fully to her languages. Her Braavosi was now impeccable and her Dothraki passable.

"Then pay close mind to what I am doing and replicate it precisely," the waif directed, "or else your brothers will stop calling you the _Cat_ and start calling you the _Pale Mare_."

The girl glowered at the tiny master but she endeavored to apply herself to the lesson despite her throbbing knuckles (and perhaps in part to avoid another unpleasant demonstration of the waif’s technique in employing her knife hilt to deliver blunt-force trauma as a means of correction). She was less frightened of producing an ineffective poison and more concerned with accidentally poisoning herself due to her carelessness. Her mind had been too filled with conflict and confusion to concentrate but she pocketed her thoughts and uncertainty about her path, her wolf dreams, Jaqen's warning, and Umma's preposterous and unsettling words. She could think on all of it later, a safe distance away from the waif's weighty dagger hilt and her lightning speed. She could consider all these things and…

And _Gendry_.

The rest of her lesson passed in uneventful silence as she perfected a few drops of the Tears of Lys, the small amount enough to end a company of men. It gave her pause as she regarded the clear liquid in its tiny vial. Knights, executioners, soldiers and outlaws alike could be eradicated, all their painted armor, their sharpened blades, their brute strength and murderous aim rendered as useless as silk ribbons on a battlefield with just the slightest taste of what was in her vial.

She had just bottled death.

A small sigh escaped her lips just before the corners of her mouth tugged up into a malicious smile.

* * *

 

Her lesson in potions and language over, the Cat's mind was in chaos. After leaving the waif, she noted she had perhaps an hour before Umma would have the midday meal prepared, not enough time to fully sort through her tumbling thoughts but too much time to sit in stillness ignoring them. She chose embrace the physical which she hoped would require too much energy to allow her to be tormented by the mental. It had been a while since she had spent much time with ranged weapons.

She entered the long chamber and lit the torches on the walls to illuminate the straw bales at the far end, linen targets pinned on them. She selected a long bow (in truth, much too large for her, but she craved its power and range) and slung a quiver full of arrows over her shoulder. She studied her target, quieted her mind, and then reached behind her to capture a shaft. Deftly she held it and then in one graceful, fluid arc, pulled it from the quiver, notched and then released it, the fletching grazing her cheek with a light kiss as the arrow flew along the line dictated by her eyes. A muffled _thump_ announced that the point had found its home, the shaft buried a few inches deep into the straw, having hit the center of the target.

"Ser Gregor _,"_ she prayed, repeating the motion, arrow grasped from behind her, notched and released, following the path dictated by her deadly promise; her grim invocation.

_Thump!_

_"_ Dunsen _."_

_Thump!_

_"_ Raff the Sweetling _."_

_Thump! Thump! Thump!_

_"_ Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei _."_

"Valar morghulis," finished a voice as familiar to her as her own.

She stiffened, and then turned to see the Lorathi leaning against the entryway, arms folded across his chest, distinct disapproval marring his features. She waited for his reproach, unsure if he would first castigate her for _praying_ in the range room, obviously failing to heed the advice he had only just given as he delivered her to her cell the night before (a memory tickled in the back of her head. _I always heed your advice_ , _though I may not always follow it precisely)_ or interrogate her about her behavior at the feast, when she had fallen asleep and become immersed in a dream in full view of the entire order.

_Does he know that it was a wolf dream?_ she wondered, then chastised herself. _Of course he does, stupid. He reads you like a parchment; like a bloody illuminated book. Rule your face!_

She mastered her expression, looking expectantly into his stern eyes, waiting for his words. When they finally came, they surprised her.

"A man would know what a girl was thinking at table last night to cause her to shudder so violently."


	6. Chapter 6

The Cat's face remained impassive as she cast her memory back to the feast, searching for some explanation of Jaqen's words. Her mind had been tossing so many different indiscretions and concerns around that she had expected him to seize upon one of _those_ and berate her for it. _A shudder_ , however, _a shudder at table_ was not immediately comprehensible to her. She dissected his words, attempting to solve the riddle. _At table_ took her to the feast, and she could envision the priests and acolytes in their positions around her, the candles burning low, casting light and shadow on plates of ruined food; bones of fowl stripped of their meat, fish heads and mussel shells piled in trenchers and on platters, pushed away. She could picture Jaqen in his seat near the head of the table, his face turned toward her, his eyes studying her with keen interest…

Then she had it, and she was bemused. Of all that he could wonder about, of all that he could question or lecture on or correct, of all the discord roiling in her head, what he had chosen to pluck out, what he wanted to know was why she had apparently visibly shuddered as she considered what her fate would be as a lady of the Seven Kingdoms, caught in the iron jaws of the game of thrones. His _most pressing_ concern was her reaction to the consideration of a completely hypothetical situation?

Her laugh was both incredulous and relieved and it served to irk him.

"A man sees no humor in the question. Perhaps a girl would share her answer so that a man may laugh as well."

She bit back her smile, chastened. His voice was even and soft but she knew him well enough not to be cozened by this. She perceived that if provoked, his response would prove to be more unpleasant than a sharp rap on the knuckles from the hilt of his dagger.

"May I ask why you want to know?" she questioned boldly.

He took a step into the room, unfolding his arms and hooking his thumbs over his sword belt with that infuriating swagger of his before answering in low tones, "A girl is having all sorts of… _interesting_ thoughts and questions of late. A man simply wonders which of these could cause a girl to lose her composure in a room full of Faceless Men _who are trained to notice every nuance and shade of a girl's behavior_."

The last bit came out as a quiet hiss, reminding the Cat of a coiled viper, signaling its menace, preparing to strike.

She read the danger in his voice, and felt it in her marrow, sensing the barest hint of a threat, but she could not conceive of its source.

He took another lazy step toward her and she held her hands up, a gesture meant to stay his advancement as well as to indicate her surrender as she began to explain herself.

When the mind considers something— _anything_ —it can scrutinize several aspects at once, dancing from idea to idea and back again in the space of a breath. Years can be contemplated in a matter of moments. In this way, the acolyte had envisioned the trials of an entire alternate life as the grey lady of the Winterfell, trapped in the clutches of her enemies, and had found herself scourged by the possibilities within a few seconds. So much so, in fact, that it had apparently wrought an involuntary yet visible shudder from her. Explaining it all to Jaqen, however, could not be achieved in the space of half a dozen heartbeats.

She stalled, uncomfortable, beginning, "I'd hardly say it was a _violent_ shudder, anyway. You only noticed because you were staring at me. I don't think anyone else even saw."

Another step toward her trumpeted his impatience.

"Alright!" she capitulated. "It's just stupid. And embarrassing. I was thinking about the freedom I've had here, even with the rules and restrictions and lessons. It made me consider how my life might have differed if I'd made other choices. If I'd never used that iron coin you gave me, or, even before that, if I'd never run from Harrenhal. What if I'd never even escaped King's Landing in the first place? I thought of life in the Red Keep, surrounded by my enemies, assuming they would have even let me live. If I had survived that… _that day_ …"

She paused, hearing Syrio's voice in her ears so clearly it was as if he and not Jaqen were standing in the room with her. Her breath caught and she closed her eyes.

_“The first sword of Braavos does not run.”_

_A wooden stick splintering against cruel steel. A man in his stance, calm as still water, as brave and fierce as a lion. No, not a lion; a wolf._

_Dead men, everywhere, their blood spilling into the dust and straw over which she scrabbled, swift as a deer, quiet as a shadow._

_A growling voice, harsh and threatening, promising to deliver her to her enemy._

_"Stick them with the pointy end," Jon's voice laughed and her desperate fingers had obeyed._

_Needle sliding through the stable boy, easy as a whisper, stained red when she pulled the steel from his gut._

_The darkness of the deepest corridors of the keep, places made for intrigue and exploration (and escape!), running over rough stone floors past mice and cats and the skulls of dragons who knows what else._

_Fear cuts deeper than swords._

_Plunging through sewers and into the river and through the streets of the city._

_Starving, stealing, hunting all the paltry game the putrid city could offer, a meager offering of rats and pigeons, gnawing hunger her constant companion._

_A crowd of stupid, vile people, stinking and surging forward, jeering, hateful, throwing rotten vegetables and rocks and insults._

_A statue rising over the Sept, visage pious but eyes unseeing as she grasped Needle in her trembling hand, wanting to vault, to run, to fly to him and free him, wanting to save him._

_And then that sound, that sound, that sound…_

Opening her eyes, she breathed deeply, restating, "If I had survived that day, but not escaped."

He nodded, his silence indicating that she should continue.

"I thought of being forced to wear gowns, and I know that's silly, but it wasn't about the gowns, just the fact that I could lose so much freedom that I could even be forced to dress in a way I did not wish, and by people who _hated_ me. And then punished for doing things not considered ladylike, or things perceived as disloyal or threatening. I thought of them taking Needle away, and giving it to some filthy little lordling as a gift, a souvenir of the destruction of the Starks. I thought how, at my age now, I would be…"

Here, she hesitated, swallowing painfully, then continued, "I'd be marriageable and that people who wanted to exploit my claim to strengthen their own power would auction me off like livestock, settling my life for me, with no thought for my own wishes, making me the prisoner of some old Lord or his stupid son, doomed to…"

 _Doomed to lie with him and have his brats to continue the legacy of the North's subjugation to the Crown, unless I could somehow find the courage to slit my own throat before the wedding_. But this she could not say aloud, her tongue stiff and unmoving, like that of a corpse.

Jaqen was silent. His posture relaxed and he leaned back against the near wall, one leg bent and his sole flat against the stones behind him. The girl relaxed as well, having said what she could say in explanation, and awaited his judgment.

"A man does not wonder at a girl's shivering," he finally said, his face inscrutable. "Still, daydreaming of a life in Westeros, thinking on these things…"

"Is not the recommended course for an acolyte in the House of Black and White?" she finished for him, allowing a trace of amusement to tinge her voice.

He knew her words were meant to be a jape, that she was purposefully understating his concern for the sake of lightening his mood with her very _Northern_ humor. He only wished she could appreciate _how much_ she was understating it.

He watched her intently, long enough that his scrutiny became uncomfortable for her, but she used it as the lesson she supposed it was intended to be and refused to betray her self-consciousness. Her stance remained relaxed, her expression passive, and she anticipated some word of instruction or command. After a few moments longer, he broke their stalemate.

"The midday meal should be ready soon," Jaqen told her dismissively, "and a girl is meant to serve her brothers today."

She inclined her head slightly toward him in a show of deference, placed her bow and quiver back in their place, and left the room.

He had other things he had wished to ask her, other things to discuss with her, but he had many more things to mull over. Her revelation about where her mind had wandered to at dinner was pressing on him for two different reasons. Firstly, as he had already indicated to her, such thoughts were not like to win her friends amongst the Faceless Men who expected her to sacrifice, as they did, all she held back from her other life; to give to the Many-Faced god who she _was_ so that she could become who the order intended her to be. Such blatant demonstrations of her disregard of this command, time after time, were bound to be seen as a sign of disrespect. The order could be very gentle with new recruits, tolerant of their peccadilloes, but only to a point. They would reach a time when these outward signs of her inability to adapt to the requirements of the order, subtle and inconsequential though they might seem to an outsider, would have ramifications. The Lorathi believed it was only her great skill in so many of the areas of her training that had prevented the masters and elders from taking any serious action against his apprentice thus far. Their patience, however, was not boundless, no matter how _kindly_ the face now worn by the principal elder might look.

His second reason was more personal in nature. She had asked him to tell her of his recent journey and he had given his promise that he would. He was still uncertain as to how much of what he had learned should be divulged to her. Now, in light of the revelation of her waking nightmare, he was more conflicted than ever. Telling her things which were sure to intensify her pull toward Westeros and the North before her training was complete seemed imprudent and unnecessarily cruel. She had just confessed the land held dangers and terrors for her she seemed only too happy to have escaped. Could he rain doubt on that happiness, telling her things he perceived would draw her toward these dangers she had miraculously and only narrowly avoided?

As the girl’s master, it was his responsibility to ensure not just her compliance with the creed of the order and her adherence to the requirements of her training, but also to protect her from harm, even when that harm emanated from _herself._ He must decide, and quickly, which course of action to take, either revealing to her the entire truth so that she might finally know all that was at stake with each decision she endeavored to make, or censoring himself so that she was protected from the perils of her own loyalties and scruples.

And also from her own untamed thirst for revenge.


	7. Chapter 7

The Cat did not mind serving at table, or in the kitchens, or in the temple stripping the dead of anything that might be useful, but she did mind being bored. She had to invent tests and exercises and challenges (both mental and physical) for herself during some of these obligations to make them more tolerable when the task itself became rote or mundane. Sometimes when serving a meal, she would examine each acolyte, priest and master and try to recall the details of the last three faces each had worn, in order to strengthen her memory and her skills of observation. When lighting the candles in the temple, she would often do it with her eyes closed, using her hearing and her true seeing to tell her which candles needed attention and when the wick was flaming in order to increase the acuteness of her senses. When removing corpses to the deeper parts of the temple, she would vary her games, one day forbidding herself from allowing any part of a tall man to touch the ground once she had hoisted him upon her shoulders, or any part of a stout lady to contact the frame of the doors through which she passed, and in this way she honed her discipline. She thought of it as simply thwarting tedium but in truth, she found meaning in the tasks beyond the superficial intent; beyond simple obedience to her masters and service to Him of Many Faces. It made her unique amongst her brothers, for a reason _besides_ simply being the only girl, and it was a difference they did not always appreciate. Even her masters seemed to be confounded at times, praising her resourcefulness and motivation while rebuking her independence.

_"Obedience is a choice," the Kindly Man once told her after reprimanding her gently for executing what seemed to be a complicated series of dance steps around the edges of the small dining hall. This had occurred during one evening meal service but did not actually represent a dance; rather, she was engaging in an imagined and complex combat exercise in which she used a spoon as a sword and a small loaf of bread as a dagger(she had been quite young then, and lacking in discipline). "You may choose to obey and remain here with us, or you may choose to live and act as you please in the household of a captain, a fisherman, or the Sealord of Braavos, either in their employ or as a wife or paramour. Say the word, child, and I shall seek you the place you desire."_

_The girl ignored that last part and attempted to defend herself sheepishly, mumbling, "I was obeying. I was told to serve and I served. I didn't spill anything and no cup was empty. It's just so dull to stand in the corner and wait to be called."_

_"Don't quibble, child!" he admonished. "You must learn to serve in stillness. Even in stillness there can be a great lesson."_

_The girl understood that there was value in stillness. Stillness and silence had been enough of a trademark for her during her assignments that she had more than earned herself the epithet "the Cat" but she did not understand the lesson to which the Kindly Man referred. Lessons were active things, involving sweat, motion, decision, creation—the antithesis of stillness. Stillness was dormancy, decay, and idleness. Stillness was withering and dying. Stillness was what the corpses that came to rest upon the stones around the temple's dark fountain had sought after losing their hope or succumbing to some weakness that persuaded them that only death remained for them._

There is only one thing we say to death.

_"Not today," she whispered to herself, earning a pitying look from the Kindly Man._

_"When you truly find a moment of stillness, you will learn it is neither life nor death," he told her as though he had read her thoughts. "It is great strength and acute awareness. Who are you, child?"_

_"No one," she replied._

_He merely shook his head sadly at her and walked away._

* * *

 

Serving at table after her time in the range room, the girl decided to remain as motionless as possible, concentrating on not swaying even a hair to the left or right, making her breathing so shallow and quiet that it was undetectable, and blinking as little as possible. When she noted a glass less than half-full, she moved swiftly to remedy the situation, causing no more disturbance in the surrounding air than a shadow cast by a sleeping cat. Halfway through the meal, she smirked inwardly, thinking that stillness was not so hard but even with her obvious mastery, she was missing whatever lesson the Kindly Man had indicated she should learn so very long ago when he had chastised her for fighting the Brave Companions of her memory and contemptible Kingsguard of her nightmares round the periphery of the room.

Deciding she had been quite still enough for one meal, she reverted to her habit of studying faces, this time trying to decide, in turn, what each of the diners were thinking. As her eyes skipped around the table, making judgments and determinations, her gaze settled upon a rat-faced boy directly opposite her position. As she locked onto his countenance (the rat-like features being his own true visage), his eyes fluttered up to meet hers, widened, then fell back to his plate, as if he had suddenly decided it was filled with the most delicious meal he had ever eaten. Hurriedly, the boy scooped heaping forkfuls of roasted onions and charred rabbit into his mouth in the manner of one who couldn't finish soon enough.

It was easy to guess at _his_ thoughts. She was certain they revolved around a particular night, immediately after she successfully completed the first assignment she had received after Jaqen departed on a ship bound for Westeros, when the rat-faced boy had seemed to crave a demonstration of her proficiency with throwing knives and she had been only too happy to oblige him.

She smirked derisively at him but then realized anyone looking at her would not have a hard time guessing _her_ thoughts, and so quickly ruled her own face. The eyes went blank, the grey of a churning sea rendered black by the dimness of the room, and the curve of her lips melted away into indifference. As she examined the boy's pointed, thin nose and too-close eyes again, she wondered if the other apprentices found themselves berated as often as she for their inability to shed their emotions thoroughly enough. Despite spending many more years in the temple than she had, the rat-faced boy seemed adept at nursing his jealousy of her. She envied his agility and skill at tumbling and acrobatics, a talent that lent itself to a particularly effective fighting style, but she did not hate him for it. Why, then, he had only had sneers for her when she demonstrated her mastery of blades, she couldn't fathom. Well, he had only had sneers until that night in the long corridor, shortly after Jaqen left. Now the sneers were replaced with a poorly disguised terror, at least when he saw her with a dagger or throwing knife on her person (which was _always_ ).

She thought back to the story of his life which she had learned shortly after beginning her apprenticeship; how he was part of a travelling mummer's show and was possessed of a particular gift for somersaults and stunts as well as skill and precision beyond his years for sleight of hand. When he arrived at the House of Black and White, six years old, starved and sickly, either an abandoned mouth to feed or a runaway (the story varied), the order decided his talents could be shaped into something useful. He had been training ever since. At the time of their first meeting, mere weeks after her arrival in Braavos, Arya was but two and ten. The rat-faced boy had already been training for six years. They were of an age and she had thought they might share a certain camaraderie after she saw him skulking about the darkness of the many corridors of the temple; she with her horse-face and ugly, haystack hair and he with his rat-face and awkward, gangly limbs. When she approached him as they both circulated around the statues and alcoves, lighting candles, she attempted to greet him, not really sure how one went about making friends in this strange place. All of her friends (few though they were) seemed to be tossed in her path by circumstance, none of them chosen, just _becoming_ ; becoming then vanishing; torn away by death, by duty, by their choices which she did not accept or her choices which were really no choice at all. Sansa had always made friends so easily, her companionship coveted for her beauty and her courtesy and her easy laughs and giggles but Arya, who would rather race through the Wolfswood on horseback as though White Walkers were at her heels or tumble through the mud and peat with Nymeria, was too uncouth for the other girls of Winterfell and the capital to care much about, and too unworthy of consideration for the boys. On the King's Road with the recruits of the Night's Watch, friendship had been dangerous for _Arry_ , a sure course for discovery and all that it might bring with it. When time, proximity, circumstance, and necessity had finally given her friends, Harrenhal, the Brotherhood without Banners, and the ambitions of men too strong for her to defeat and too cynical for her to comprehend had separated those friends from her.

Once, she had even made a friend of a butcher’s boy, and he had died for it.

With all her history of ill luck and failure at friendship, she had still truly believed the rat-faced boy would be glad of her company. She would be someone to spar with, someone to share work, or someone to just… talk to, if only so that another's voice might help quiet the ghosts of the past. In this way, she might be able to rebuild her pack. But when she had approached him, he met her eyes with something that was too close to hatred for her to feel there was any chance of them becoming friendly sparring partners or part of the same pack.

"You're the girl," he said in the common tongue, voice thick with an almost palpable revulsion, pale face pinched under his dark hair. "I've heard your name around here. The masters talked about you, Arya _Stark_."

He nearly choked on her name, and she did not understand why. She wasn't even sure why he would know it. Why had it been spoken in his hearing? Why had it been spoken _at all_ when she was told constantly, repeatedly, and monotonously to _forget_ her own name? Confused and discomfited, she backed away without a word, turned on her heel and ran. That had been nearly four years ago and every now and again, the memory returned to her, though she was no closer to solving the mystery of the boy's contempt than she was the first day she recognized it in his eyes and his sneer. And now it was buried under a multitude of new wrongs; layer upon layer of insults and distrust; incidents during training in which one or both of them ended up more bruised or bloodied than was strictly necessary or sanctioned; scornful remarks in place of congratulations following accomplishments and successes; subtle sabotage, not serious enough to draw the attention and ire of the masters, but irritating enough to set her teeth on edge. All this she endured, and in truth, some of it she wrought, yet she was no wiser as to the original seed of animosity. She tended to suppose it was because she was a girl and though that was not unheard of within the order, it was still a rarity. It had been her experience, especially before leaving Westeros, that most males, be they men grown or green boys, tended to disdain the skills and intellect of women, believing them good for only a handful of purposes, foremost of which was spitting out children to carry on the family name or to trade to other houses for gold and power (under the very courteous and respectable guise of a _marriage contract)_. Because girls not yet flowered were useless for even that, they received even less consideration, being no more than afterthoughts in the hierarchy of power. Even here, in the temple where very little value was placed on one's gender, she supposed some of her brothers might hate her simple for being _a_ _her,_ and might continue to do so until it had been trained out of them.

While waiting for the meal to end, the girl focused on the rat-faced boy once again, searching his expression for the hundredth time, looking for some clue to explain the antipathy, now mutual after the years of mockery and meanness. Finding none, she dismissed him from her thoughts and slipped silently around the table to refill wine glasses and water goblets once again.

* * *

While the girl served, Jaqen walked in the temple courtyard garden with the Kindly Man, relishing the coolness radiating from the dark stone of the walls in the shade. It was tranquil here, and quiet; free from the tension of the range room he had only just left after inspecting a girl's marksmanship as the sound of her fading footfalls echoed down the corridor (he smirked at that; _a girl knows how to move in silence_. That he was hearing her at all signaled a purposeful carelessness, her own small act of rebellion, a sign only he would read). The center of the target was home to nearly all of her arrows, the accuracy undeniable in the noiselessness and solitude of the empty chamber. He had wondered if it would remain so in the thick of battle or while lying flat on a roof in the boiling heat awaiting a target who might take hours to come into a sniper's range. The Kindly Man finished speaking and the heavy silence of the courtyard brought Jaqen's attention back to their conversation. They were discussing the timing of the next initiation, deciding who was ready for their final test and who still required more training. When the Kindly Man suggested the brutish boy who had bested the Cat with his tourney sword, Jaqen felt compelled to state his concerns.

"The boy seems unable to master his emotions in the face of fairly minor stresses," Jaqen judged. "A man believes he must learn this simple lesson first before he is ready to leave the house and charge forth into the world as a Faceless Man."

"Do you?" the Kindly Man returned mildly. "What makes you say so?"

"A man witnessed the boy serving at the feast last night. A few words from a small girl were enough to send a boy scampering away as if being threatened by wolves."

The Kindly Man chuckled, suggesting, "Perhaps he was... Yes, our little wolf has certainly earned the dread of her brothers."

Jaqen's face remained passive, but he asked the question that had crossed his mind last night, posing it to the man in the temple most likely to know the answer. There was nothing in the House of Black and White that remained hidden to the Kindly Man's eye.

"A man has noted this... _dread_ ," the Lorathi acknowledged. "He wonders what occurred during his absence to inspire it?"

"A most elegant show of skill and a most disappointing lack of restraint," was the Kindly Man's cryptic reply.


	8. Chapter 8

After clearing the small dining hall following the midday meal, the girl was free to do as she pleased, already having completed her prescribed lessons for the day with the waif and a little extra training on her own with the longbow. Of course, there was always a chance that someone would drop from the rafters in front of her with a sword, forcing her into an impromptu duel or whisper questions to her from dark alcoves and dim corners as she passed, forcing her to think on her feet and answer. Instruction never _really_ ended in the temple. Still, having no assigned duties allowed her the time she needed to sort through her unruly thoughts. She left the kitchen after helping Umma finish cleaning and storing the dishes and headed for the courtyard garden to sit and think in the shade of the alternating lemon and fig trees. She arrived without incident and found that she had her choice of any of the scattered benches upon which to sit, both black and white marble surfaces warmed by the afternoon heat. Choosing a dark bench under the shade of a lemon tree midway down the stone path that wound through the garden, she sat down heavily and slumped over, gazing across the path at the fountain which babbled peacefully there. Placing her bent elbows upon her knees and resting her chin in her cupped hands, she sighed heavily. This posture caused her thick braid to slide over one shoulder, laying her neck bare. She felt the warm breeze blow across it and relaxed into her thoughts.

She reviewed all that had occurred since Jaqen returned to Braavos yesterday morning ( _only a day! Seven hells!_ ) and found herself dwelling on the details of their spur of the moment sparring session after the training tourney, trying to pick apart the memory and discover if she had done anything at all that might be misconstrued as _flirting_. Satisfied that there was nothing and Umma must be going mad from the constant heat of the kitchen, she was soon reliving the dance itself, relishing her memory of the clashing steel, recalling the graceful yet powerful move he had used to ultimately disarm her (and trying to commit it to memory so that she might use it herself in the future). She remembered the way he had looked at her—no, _through_ her—with an almost melancholy stare as he commented on her hair. But it wasn't really a comment on her hair, or her looks, she knew. _It was something about… something like…_

Here her mind scrambled to disentangle the ball of emotions that had wound itself into her chest at his words (and at his _expression_ ). She began to understand that he meant she was growing up, or, more precisely, was now a woman grown, and that this knowledge caused him to feel… _something_. Sadness? Consternation? Or, pity? Did he seem, perhaps, a little afraid for her? Or maybe it was disappointment that she had reached this age without yet mastering all the competencies she would need to take her vows and enter the order, no longer an acolyte but his equal. Even when she could read him, and know that he had a feeling or a thought about her, he still confounded her ability to interpret that thought. He was _maddening!_

_And so handsome,_ a little voice from somewhere deep inside of her chirped.

_Where did_ that _come from?_ she wondered with alarm. _Must be a product of Umma’s ridiculous accusation._

She shook her head slightly, trying to dislodge the uncharacteristic observation about her master’s _handsome appearance,_ and thought again on his words; his melancholy tone. _Why did he seem sad?_ She resolved to stop torturing herself with speculation and just ask him about it the next time she saw him. She needed to use her little bit of free time to understand her wolf dream and worrying about a silly _look_ on Jaqen's face was taking up entirely too much of her day.

The sunlight filtered through the leaves of the lemon tree which sheltered her and dappled the skin on the back of her neck with warm kisses. She shut her eyes, enjoying the feeling, and saw Nymeria behind her closed lids. Nymeria, so fierce and so large; so much more powerful than the pup she had shunned after the incident with Mycah and Joffrey. She still felt pangs of guilt, even after all this time, when she thought of the rock she had thrown; the yelp of pain when it had struck the loyal direwolf on the nose. But the Nymeria that had appeared in her dream, _that_ Nymeria was unlikely to be harmed by something so ordinary as a sharp rock. She had been brilliant and terrifying and majestic. She had been a _Queen_ of winter and the awesome dread of Ice and the noble heart of all the Starks that came before the one who had dreamed of her. She had saved those children, she and her pack (the part of her that was still Arya Stark felt relieved at the thought that Nymeria had created a pack for herself; relieved, but also a little sad.)

And Nymeria had seen Gendry, and it seemed there had passed between them some sort of recognition and with it, a spark of understanding.

Why was she dreaming of Gendry? She hadn't thought of him in months and months, not even sparing a fleeting second to consider her memories of him. Suddenly, upon Jaqen's return, she was having wolf dreams and Gendry dreams and distractions from her lessons the likes of which she hadn't experienced since she was a new acolyte who had just earned her black and white robe. She was sure it was only such a momentary diversion that had allowed the large bear to disarm her yesterday after she had managed to dispatch all of his fellows from the tourney.

"Don't make excuses," she admonished herself. "It doesn't matter if you have the skill or the strength or the superior position. If you allow yourself to be disarmed due to a _distraction_ , you'll be just as dead."

She sat upright and stared off at the fountain across from her, listening to the gentle sound of water falling on water, marveling at how _real_ the dream had been—how real they always were. She had smelled the blood and fear just as surely as she could smell the damp earth now beneath her feet. She had heard the growls and screams in her ears just as truly as she heard the splashing water of the fountain before her. She had felt the rise of fur on Nymeria’s back under the heat of those Baratheon blue eyes just as intensely as…

_As she now felt a gaze upon her back_.

The Cat leapt to her feet, drawing the hidden dagger at her wrist and whirling, ready to battle whichever master had crept upon her, unnoticed due to her reverie, but now discovered. She crouched, fingers tingling with adrenaline, eyes wide and searching. She didn't have to look far. Leaning casually against the lemon tree, arms crossed over his chest, stood Jaqen, expression unconcerned. He stood a mere two paces from the now empty bench.

"Why does a girl threaten a man with her ridiculously small blade?"

"Why does a man sneak up on a girl, trying to catch her off guard and take her unawares?" she retorted, heart still hammering in her chest. "Afraid of a fair fight?"

"Your words wound a man more than that tiny dagger ever could," he replied in mock sadness.

"Let's test your theory," she said in a dangerously low tone.

Jaqen unfolded his arms and stood up straight, sighing at her.

"A girl mistakes a man's intentions. There is no lesson here. A man does not wish to duel."

She rose from her crouched position with a distinctly feline stretch and asked, "Then why are you here, sneaking around?"

"A man does not _sneak_ ," came his indignant reply, then smirking, he added, "Is it a man's fault that his steps are lighter than a tiny girl's bovine stomps?"

She glared at him, but remembering her far-from-noiseless retreat from the range room earlier, started to laugh her throaty laugh. The sound caused Jaqen's amused smirk to widen.

"Then why _are_ you here?" she pressed.

"Looking for you, lovely girl," he returned lightly, provoking her purposefully by not truly answering the question.

"Yes, by _why_?" she demanded with exasperation.

"A man is curious about a certain incident being discussed by a girl's brothers; an incident so terrifying that a girl's fellows seem to scatter whenever she appears."

Her eyes met his from under a wrinkled brow, thinking about his demand to know what had caused her to shudder at dinner, and now this question of the _throwing knife_ incident. She quirked up one eyebrow and parroted, "A man is having all sorts of _interesting_ thoughts and questions of late."

"Impudent girl!" he declared, pursing his lips. "Still, a man would hear the tale."

"Don't you already know it?" she asked, assuming the Kindly Man or one of the other elders had already complained to her newly-arrived master about her, directing him to take her in hand.

Jaqen shrugged, his voice like a deep purr, saying, "A man would hear it from _your_ lips."

He moved from behind the bench as she dropped back down onto her seat. He stood in front of her reclining form and hooked his one thumb in his swordbelt, waiting for her to tell him what he wanted to know.

"It happened not long after you left Braavos," she began.

_She was given an assignment by the Kindly Man. Someone had prayed for the death of a certain ship's captain, and she was to answer this prayer. She had already completed several of these assignments without incident (the Kindly Man was fond of sending acolytes out to do the bidding of the Many-Faced god within the borders of Braavos, saving the assignments that required travel to other lands for the more experienced masters), so it wasn't until she was apprised of the_ special requests _surrounding this assignment that her interest was piqued. It was important to the one who had prayed that this ship's captain meet his end by way of a dagger to the heart—the captain's_ own _dagger, as it happened—and that the death look like an accident._

_"A blade through the heart," she clarified, "and it's meant to look_ accidental?"

_The Kindly Man nodded once._

_"Seven hells! That defies logic!" she declared._

_"If you would rather I assign this task to one of your brothers, I understand," the Kindly Man replied dolefully. "I had believed you clever enough to solve this problem, but now I see I was wrong."_

_Of course, she had bristled at that and insisted she would do this thing, no need to involve one of her brothers._

_In the end, it had proven easier than she could have imagined. The tavern frequented by the captain happened to be the rowdiest, most disreputable one in all of Braavos, always crowded with drunken sailors, boisterous whores, and infamous pickpockets. She chose the most crowded hour to slip in, wearing the face of a begging urchin, and relieved the doomed captain of his dagger as he sat, deep in his cups, at a table with a tavern wench balanced on his lap. The Cat slid through the crowd to the other side of the tavern, passing a table of vain Bravos, saying as she did, "Those Lyseni pirates across the room are claiming Bravos are no better than poxy whores."_

_As the brightly attired, extremely drunk Bravos rose from their table and started across the room with drawn blades, she removed the purse of coin from one man's pocket and placed it in another's, loudly proclaiming, "You should give that back!" and drawing the attention of the first man to his loss. Fists were immediately thrown and she continued sowing the seeds of chaos by pulling one whore's hair, hard, and making it seem as if another whore standing behind her had done the deed. Within mere moments, the place had erupted into a roiling sea of flying fists, hacking knives, and slashing swords. She was enveloped by the din and roar of discord, her own glorious creation. The captain remained at his table, but stood to avoid being crushed under the weight of one of the Lyseni pirates who was fighting with one of the Bravos and stumbled back into the captain's chair. The tavern wench plopped heavily from his lap to the floor with a squeal, throwing her arms up to shield herself from the kicking and stomping boots of the men surrounding her._

_There were perhaps thirty bodies, moving, thrashing, falling, or lunging between the Cat's position and the captain's, and she could only see him intermittently, a picture of his arm above the shoulder of a brawling whore, a glimpse of his belly framed between the dueling forms of a sailor and a Bravo, a peek of his throat visible when the tavern owner came out and barreled over a pirate to drag him to the door, intent on tossing him out on his ear, as if that would remotely salve the pandemonium. She drew upon all of her focus, all of the lessons she had learned in her time in the House of Black and White, and her confidence in her own abilities and seized the exact moment the captain's chest came into her view, throwing his blade with precision and force, threading the ever-changing eye of the needle with cold steel before it could reshape and hide her target. She buried the captain's own dagger hilt-deep into his heart._

_"Valar morghulis," she whispered as he clutched at the knife in surprise. Without waiting to watch him breathe his last, she slunk around the edge of the room, deftly dodging blows and blades, and made her way out of the tavern and back to the temple._

_Upon her arrival, she nearly collided with the Kindly Man as she burst through the weirwood and ebony doors, her success tumbling out of her mouth as soon as she spotted him._

_He nodded solemnly and asked her to walk with him as she explained how the thing was done. They moved through the antechamber of the temple and headed down the dim, wide corridor leading to the tranquil pool, past the many pale statues the lined the walk. She told him of stealing the captain's knife, instigating the tavern fight, and how the deed was finally accomplished, sparing no detail. She knew he wanted to critique her performance and chastise her for any superfluous actions or unnecessary risks. To her profound surprise (and delight), however, she found that he had no criticism to offer. When she had finished her report, he only offered her a mild look._

_"Well done," he said simply. "You may make a Faceless Man yet."_

_She sensed a smile being born of the feeling of triumph in her belly and fought to keep it from bursting forth onto her face._

_"Who are you, child?"_

_"No one," she answered darkly, and without hesitation._

_This time, he had no reply for her but merely nodded his head thoughtfully and walked away._

_It wasn't until later that she realized her conversation with the Kindly Man had been overheard by one of the other acolytes. She was leaving the training room, having hacked at straw dummies for what seemed like hours with a blunted blade in an attempt to drain the adrenaline and excitement still buzzing inside of her after her success and the most favorable reaction yet from the Kindly Man. Prior to taking on the dummies with a sword, she had peppered them with her own knives, deceptively small and wickedly sharp, pulled from their leather sheaths on her assassin's belt. As she left the training room, happily exhausted, she was wearing the belt still, a leather strap slung over one shoulder and lying diagonally across her chest with two dozen shallow, side faced pockets, both front and back, meant to hold the blades she favored. She pulled the wooden door closed behind her. When she turned to leave, the rat-faced boy was upon her, laughing maliciously in her face, saying something about how nice it must be to have the compliments of the Kindly Man for what amounted to nothing more than dumb luck._

_She shrugged him off, saying, "Luck had nothing to do with it. I intended to give the gift to the captain and I did."_

_The boy laughed incredulously, sneering, "You threw a knife into a crowd of thirty people and didn't manage to hit a single one of them but instead hit the captain? If that's not luck, I don't know what is. What's more, it's stupidity! You could have killed the wrong person and lost the knife in the process! Did the_ great and magnificent Cat _have a plan for that possibility?"_

_"I didn't need to plan for that possibility. I knew I would succeed," she told him matter-of-factly, walking down the long corridor, leaving him seething in front of the training room door._

_"The only thing you Starks_ succeed _at is getting your heads taken off your shoulders!" he spat after her._

_She had already retreated at least thirty feet down the dim passageway, but his words rang clear in her ears and they stopped her dead in her tracks. Snarling, she spun around like a whirlwind, plucking one of the thin blades from her belt as she did, and hurled it at the boy before he could react to her motion. It flew from her fingertips as instinctively as a dragon spits fire, sighing through the air like the breath taken after a maiden's first kiss, obeying her will and flying along the path she desired. The soft thump of sharp steel meeting wood was unmistakable, and the rat-faced boy found his sleeve pinned to the door at the wrist, the flesh of his arm unmarked._

_He gaped at her, impossibly far away, features hidden by the dimness of the corridor, then started to shout something. His cries were cut off by steel parting the grain of the door three, then four more times, blindingly fast, now pinning both sleeves to the wooden door, rendering him unable to move either arm. She gazed at him for a moment, examining him as casually as she would examine a tapestry hanging on the wall, then turned on her heel and stalked off. The boy gathered his courage and screamed after her to release him, threatening her, barely able to make out her form now in the guttering torch-light. A second later, she answered him with another knife, turned sideways, sinking deep into the wood just above his skull, the flat of the blade gently vibrating, patting his head like a mother comforting a disconsolate child._


	9. Chapter 9

Jaqen listened to her recounting of the tale with keen interest. He knew the girl was not the sort to overstate her own skill and he also knew the gist of the affair from various comments made by his brothers, but still he found the description of the feats incredible. His own talent with throwing knives was great but he doubted he could have accomplished what she had just described. It led him to wonder if she had some special kinship with the instruments; if they performed for her in ways they would not for others, bending to her will as the steel in her blood sang out to steel of the blades. Was it some vestige of power gifted to her people from the old gods? Some power once common amongst the First Men and the Children of the Forest, long ago lost to the world except for the tiny spark that burned within this one snowy girl?

As she finished speaking, he shook his head in wonder and studied her face in the dappled light, the lacy patterns daintily filtering into the garden through the leaves of the fruit trees and delicately shading the flesh of her forehead and cheeks. She has grown so lovely in his absence, nearly as tall now as she was like to be, her shape no longer that of a child, but of a woman.

"Why do you look at me like you're sad all the time?" she asked suddenly.

He was surprised by the sound of her voice, curiously prodding him to reveal the thing he was not yet sure he wished to tell.

"Some thoughts, a man would keep for himself," he murmured.

His secrecy both frustrated her and impressed her. Here, she had just performed like Old Nan, telling a story in excruciating detail simply because he had asked. And then there was their encounter from earlier today, when she had prattled on about what might happen to her if she returned home to Westeros, detailing her fears about life as a highborn lady and heir to the North in the clutches of unscrupulous men. Yet despite her candor, he would not answer one simple question; a question she knew she had every right to ask, with an answer she felt she had every right to know.

She had learned to guard her thoughts, her face and her voice to a great extent but she still felt bare in Jaqen's presence. Maybe it was because she needed someone to whom she _could_ talk and Jaqen was the person she trusted most. Or maybe it was because he had known most of her iterations, having seen her as Arry and Arya; a mouse and a wolf pup; a lovely girl and an evil child; and then had given her the means to become no one. Remembering sharply the instant he had handed her the iron coin, she stopped to consider the meaning behind that one act, recognizing the faith he had shown in her; a belief he must have had that she would rise and become something more than she was. She did not understand it at the time, when she was just a stupid little girl, but she grasped it now and loved him fiercely for it.

She glanced up at him and sighed deeply. He laughed lightly at her seriousness, giving her one of his teasing smiles.

"I wish _I_ could do that," his apprentice muttered, more to herself than him. She turned her head aside, pointing her chin toward her shoulder to avoid his eyes, a subtle movement that bared her white neck and showed her exquisite, pale profile, reminding him again how unconscious she was of her own beauty.

"What does a girl wish she could do?"

She paused for a moment, then answered, "Keep my secrets from you."

He regarded her with amusement and asked, "What secrets does a Cat have that a man should not know?"

She glanced sideways at him, lifting her steely eyes to his, peering through her dark lashes, a playful smile starting to dance at one corner of her mouth. _Little imp_! he thought.

"If I told you," she said slyly, "they wouldn't be secrets anymore."

He didn't reply to her immediately, so busy was he marveling at her unpracticed grace. Her hands braced against the bench, fingers curved lightly over its back edge. Her head tilted just so and her freshly braided hair trailed over one shoulder. She was so very lovely. Her eyes, clear and piercing, were the color of the Northern sky under which she had been born.

"With such a look, a girl could own most men, _and_ their secrets," he told her, taking her chin in hand and turning her face to examine it more closely.

He found it hard to look upon her pale cheek and ignore the desire to protect her that grew stronger with each passing moment. She looked for all the world like some great, dark beauty from the tales of knights and valor favored by the young girls in Western houses. He had to remind himself that none of those ladies could match this one lovely girl in wit, grace, or beauty and most of their gallant knights could not hope to answer her swordsmanship or her fearlessness. She would need those qualities in the days to come when he would be unable to teach her further or protect her.

Not that she would easily allow him to protect her…

She absorbed his comments and her face grew sour, distant voices echoing in her ears. _Arya Horseface. Lumpy Head. Ugly little boy. Wild beast. Discourteous, unkempt girl._ She shook her head stiffly, knocking his hand away from her chin. When the girl spoke, her voice had become cold.

"I will thank you not to mock me. I work diligently to improve those things I can. I even grew my hair long, at _your_ suggestion, I might add. I cannot help that the gods did not grace me with beauty and natural charm. I think my blade skills make up for it some. I hope eventually they will _more_ than make up for it."

"You mistake a man," he assured her softly. "No mockery was meant."

She gave him a suspicious look, her drawn brow clearly communicating her disbelief.

He laughed at her then, saying, "Look upon a man's face and search it for the truth in his words."

She raised her eyes to his, her own features implacable, and studied him. When she said nothing, he continued.

"A man was led to believe that a girl was given her eyes back long ago. How can you be so perceptive in some matters, but remain so blind in those which concern yourself?"

She had no answer for him.

She had dreamed of Nymeria again. Her skin prickled even to think of the wolf here inside the temple, so incongruous were the two. The serenity and damp coolness she felt in the main chamber, even as she removed those who had come to seek the gift in the night, clashed uncomfortably with the thrill of the cold night air in the forest, ruffling her fur as she raced through the trees… as _Nymeria_ raced through the trees, growls ripping through her from deep inside as she pursued her prey. She felt so _alive_ after the dream, she could almost _taste_ the warm blood and meat…

As she carried the half-starved corpse of a young woman from the far side of the pool to the corridor leading to the passage below, she wondered if these dreams were meant to inform her somehow. Were they born of memories alone, the memories she was urged regularly to forget? Was this her Arya-ness trying to leave her, given up in the misty form of dreams to the wind to be carried away? Could Nymeria and the North be _dreamed_ out of her? Or were the dreams a creation of the desire to _not_ forget, designed by the part of her that wished to remain _her_ , burning that self into her brain with such permanence that it could never be left behind? The feeling of _being_ Nymeria was just so strong, it felt as if she was supposed to understand something or learn something or…

"Or they're just stupid dreams, you silly girl," she grumbled under her breath, pushing open the door to the chamber where she would strip the thin woman of anything useful.

As she set about her work, her mind wandered back to the dream. There was nothing identifiable about the forest, but she knew it wasn't the Wolfswood—no snow on the ground. As she picked over the dead woman's clothes, not expecting to find much but intending to remove whatever was there, she found a small dagger in the woman's pocket. It was not particularly fine, but was still an odd thing for a poor woman of Braavos to be carrying into the House of Black and White. The Cat placed it in her pocket, intending to take it to the armory when her work was done, wondering if the wood in which Nymeria's pack had been hunting was the same one she had seen in her previous dream; the one around the Inn where Gendry and the children had been fighting. She removed the woman's shoes and thought that even at full speed, the pack could not have travelled far in the few days since she had last dreamed of them. She shook her head in disgust, wondering why it _would_ be the same, why a _dream-wolf_ would be concerned with particular territory or would need to even move in a logical way. _It was just a dream._

In this way, she went about her work, completing the task of moving and stripping corpses, sorting their things (now the Many-Faced god's things) all while pondering her dream and mocking herself for every thought she had about it.

She folded breeches, skirts and shifts as she allowed herself to think about Nymeria outside of her dream. Nymeria was still alive, the girl had no doubt—no direwolf could be threatened by anything the South could wield against her (thoughts of Grey Wind and Robb stirred in her mind and she squelched them, refusing to see such a horror as anything other than an anomaly. Nymeria was not locked up, trapped and surrounded by thousands of men, armed and armored, with a single, hideous purpose. She was free, and would be full grown now, the size of a great pony, maybe larger. She could never succumb to what befell Grey Wind).

Arya grimaced in the low light of the quiet room, her thoughts betraying her efforts to forget, to become no one and leave the direwolf and the North behind. It was so tiring to constantly contain and deny the winter in her veins. She wondered if there was another fate for her, one that would bring her to Nymeria's side, then laughed inwardly, because the first obstacle, the simplest of all, was one that she wasn't sure she could overcome. She was in _Braavos._ How would she get to back home?

There was no Westerosi coin, no gold dragon or copper, no motto or secret phrase in the common tongue that might convince a man of White Harbor or Dragon Stone or the Iron Islands to bear a lone girl safely back home, across the water, to the North. She was a fine swimmer, but the Narrow Sea was more of a challenge than she could overcome. She had thought of it before (though less and less as the years passed), how she could go home. Mostly though, she struggled to smother such thoughts, dismissing them with a declaration to herself that she was _no one_ and _no one_ did not return to a home she no longer had. But sometimes… sometimes when the Kindly Man chastised her in his way, calling her a liar, saying she held onto the high walls of Winterfell still, she considered his offer to release her from her obligations to the order. He would usually tell her he could find her a suitor (some fat, rich Braavosi who might like a young, foreign beauty for a wife, to lay beneath him and bear his fat children) or perhaps a job, a place in a lord's household, cooking or tending his daughters. It was never the situation he offered that tempted her (she had no intention of marrying anyone or taking care of someone else's children) but the freedom—the freedom to begin her quest, the one she still thought of in the night, long after the others had drifted off to sleep. The quest with no purpose but death.

_Ser Gregor, Dunsen, Raff the Sweetling, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei._

_"_ Valar morghulis _,"_ she whispered, the hairs on her neck tickling her as they slowly raised.

Too late, she realized, grabbing the small dagger she had found on the first corpse from her pocket and whirling around. Before she could lift it, she had been thrown against the wall, sharp point of a blade digging into her throat under her chin.

"A girl was not paying attention," Jaqen scolded her after making that infuriating tut-tut sound.

"Gods, Jaqen! You almost scared me out of my wits!" she seethed.

"A man would have to assume a girl was _using_ her wits first."

She frowned at his insult, struggling against his grip, thinking to poke him with the dagger still clutched in her left hand. He dug his thumb into the soft spot in her wrist that he had taught her to target and her hand betrayed her, releasing the dagger. She looked at him murderously as the knife clattered against the stone floor.

"Why are you creeping up on me? I'm meant to be taking care of the corpses!"

"Meant to be taking care of the corpses?" he scoffed. "Does this mean a girl has no need to stay alert? Does death only come when a girl is not too busy for it? Will her enemies wait for her to be ready before they strike?"

She glared at him but said nothing.

"A girl must always keep her head about her," he lectured her as he withdrew the blade, "lest she lose it."


	10. Chapter 10

The Cat wore her own face but kept it well hidden, strolling about the crowded market, weaving through the throngs of people perusing the goods offered in the stalls. She had donned the dress and veil of a wealthy widow of Pentos, a bit of mummery she was able to employ after discovering mourning garb while searching the piles and piles of clothing in the dark chambers below the temple fountain. It did not surprise her to find widow's attire amongst the rags and shifts and tunics collected over the years by the Faceless Men; after all, who had more reason to seek the gift than the bereaved? What had surprised her was how unaccountably comfortable the dress was; lightweight, dark cloth soft against her skin, breathing so that she was not overly hot in the crowd. If her dresses had been this comfortable as a girl, she might have developed a tolerance for wearing them. And the best part was the veil—sheer enough to allow her to see well, opaque enough to hide her features, and all without requiring the blood sacrifice and nightmares that inevitably came with borrowing a face from the repository.

Not that the Cat objected to a little pain and a few nightmares for the wonder of being someone completely different from time to time, but every now and again, it was nice to just be… _comfortable._ She did not take the time to consider why she had been drawn to the widow's clothes in the first place; did not dwell on the fact that she had been in mourning for nearly half her life; first mourning Bran's broken body and then selfishly for the loss of her bastard brother to his sense of duty, his need to serve the realm; mourning for her sacrifice of Nymeria and the unjust slaying of Lady; mourning for the loss of so many of the men of her household whose faces she had known since the beginning of her memory; mourning for her father; mourning for the loss of friendships and innocence and _trust_ ; her mother, Robb, Grey Wind, Bran, Rickon... It was no wonder that she felt so _comfortable_ in this soft dress and dark veil, for she wore their like constantly, invisibly, in her features and over her heart, where she carried her heavy sorrow and her immeasurable loss with her always.

She laughed bitterly to herself, realizing how relative _comfort_ truly was. When wending her way up the King's Road as one of Yoren's _boys_ , comfort was finding a bush far enough away from prying eyes to make her water without fearing discovery but close enough that she didn't run an inordinate risk of being eaten by a wolf. When escaping from Harrenhal on a stolen horse, racing for her life with Hot Pie and Gendry in tow, comfort was anything more substantial than acorn paste for supper. While travelling with the Hound, she had found small comfort, at least briefly, in shortening her prayer by one name: the Tickler. Here in Braavos, comfort was someone else's soft clothes and her own face.

She wondered what sort of pain was associated with wearing a completely glamoured face; a face conjured from the mist in an instant but so convincing a cloak that no one would ever guess the difference between real and false. Acolytes were not trained in this art—it was reserved for masters and priests, those who had spoken their vows to the Many-Faced god and the order, and they could take the mask on and off as easily as she put on and pulled off a glove. Easier, possibly. But there was a price to be paid for the skill (wasn’t there always a price?) She did not know what that price was, though not for lack of asking, but she felt certain it must be _significant_. More than a trickle of blood and some bad dreams, at least.

Her attention was drawn to an apple-cheeked girl, perhaps twenty years old, with raven ringlets and soft, brown doe eyes. The Cat was instructed to give to her the gift prayed for by her master; the master who was also her lover but whose wife no longer wished to tolerate his proclivities. The acolyte was not often told of the particulars of the prayers which led to her assignments, so having these details to mull was something of a rarity. She found the foreknowledge made her study the doomed girl more closely, looking for any sign of awareness in her pretty features. The girl was so vibrant, so _animated_ , that the Cat marveled at the inconstant nature of life and the undeniable ascendency of death. This girl, so pink, so energetic, so unaware, would soon be _no more_.

_Valar morghulis._

Still, the Cat supposed it was a kindness in a way. Unfair, perhaps, but kind. The man might have done the deed himself, but then a _man_ would not give up something he truly wanted because another told him he must. Despite his lack of gumption, the Cat supposed he must actually love this girl. Why else pay a small fortune to be rid of her in the most painless way possible? Sweetsleep, the dose too high even for a man thrice her size to survive, would lace the small package of candied figs the girl was sent to purchase with coin given her for just such a treat by the one who loved her most of all.

The Cat imagined a scenario where the master had reason to believe his wife would harm the girl, perhaps marring her beauty with some vile torture born of jealousy. A gentle poison, one that would preserve her blushing cheeks and crimson lips, certainly seemed preferable to a slow death at the hands of one who hated her. She shrugged to herself, supposing it was not hers to question.

As the curly-headed servant left the stall with her small basket of figs in hand, the Cat-who-was-a-widow collided with her, gave a convincingly startled yelp, and then profusely apologized in faintly Pentoshi-accented Braavosi (she was proud of that bit. She had an ear for accents; the waif had told her so). The deed done, a small glass vial was slipped effortlessly back in the pocket of the mourning gown with no one the wiser. _It was really too easy_.

The apple-cheeked girl sadly smiled at the grieving widow with the sort of sincere pity that only one truly in love can radiate when confronted with one whose love had been lost to her forever.

_The fool,_ her less-than-charitable little voice remarked. The Cat blinked the voice away. She had work to do, and that work did not include passing judgment.

"Oh, no, dear lady," the girl said, waving off the widow's apologies, "pardon me!"

The girl patted the widow's hand and bounced away, aiming for her master's household, where she could enjoy her candied treat and perhaps a treat of a different sort. The widow did not watch her go, feeling no need to bother with her any further. The lively girl was no longer part of this world, though she did not yet know it.

Unlike the previous times she had been tapped to deliver the gift, the Cat did not feel the strong urge to immediately return to the temple and report her success. Indeed, with this commission, she would not be certain of success until the Kindly Man reported it to her. That was the way with poisons. They were sometimes necessary, even preferable, but they lacked the immediate finality of a well-placed sword point. She would be told at some juncture that the girl was dead, likely with a suitably understated turn of phrase typical of the Kindly Man's vernacular (she imagined him for a moment, saying, "There was a beautiful young maid who I hear did not awaken this morning" or "The fruit sellers are lamenting the loss of one of their favorite customers") but until then, dwelling on it seemed a waste of time.

Instead, she whirled around, her soft skirts fluttering about her ankles, and left the market, bound for the docks. She considered buying a small basket of candied figs to take with her, but then thought the better of it, leaving the market empty-handed. It was not a long walk and soon she was enjoying the sting of the salty air in her nose while watching the bustle of the Braavosi port; the loading and unloading of ships; the taking on and disembarking of passengers; the sailors and captains relishing the feel of solid land under their feet for a short time before setting sail once again.

She loved this scenery. It reminded her of arriving in Braavos, a refugee with safe passage guaranteed by an iron coin and the words taught to her by a man unwilling to leave her without a means for escaping; a way to free herself from a land that had long brutalized her. It reminded her of the simplicity of life with Brusco and his daughters, selling the fishmonger’s stock for him and having a home to return to in which she could share a bed and keep warm with girls who did not chide her about lack of manners and her poorly rendered stitches. It reminded her of performing a duty carried out by her father before her—punishing a black brother who had forsaken his vows, a deserter of the Night's Watch. It reminded her of her thoughts of finding a ship to bear her back home.

She pushed _that_ thought back down in the way she had perfected over the years. She would not think about home—she had no home. Or rather, her home was now with her brothers, with Umma, with the waif and the Kindly Man, with Jaqen… Everything else was just a dream; a useless distraction from the life she had _chosen_.

Behind the veil, her face tensed. _Nymeria_. It felt like a betrayal to call her a _distraction._ But no, she hadn't meant it like that—just that the dreams were a distraction. And they _were_ , as were the thoughts and feelings they inevitably bore upon her awakening. Whenever she thought of her wolf, her focus softened and she felt an almost… _tugging_ sensation. It was as if she was being pulled back across the Narrow Sea, towards Westeros, overland and through the forest, into Nymeria's very skin. Then, without fail, Jaqen would be there with some timely reminder, an admonishment that her loss of concentration was going to get her killed.

She refused to believe she could be that stupid. By the time she was allowed to take her vows and be sent into the world as a messenger of the Many-Faced god, she would have not only become a master of death but also the master of her dreams. They would not plague her forever. She was sure of it. She had only to decide… _to let go._

The widow looked out over the harbor and was surprised to see _The Dragon's Daughter_ still in port. It was the ship upon which Jaqen had secured his passage home. They must still be awaiting their cargo to carry back to Dragonstone. She wondered what it was from Braavos that Stannis' people craved most—lemons, most like. Well, there were plenty of those to be had. She watched as a sailor climbed aboard then noted how he stopped short immediately upon gaining the deck and swiftly moved aside. He was making way for another man, ready to disembark; a tall, lean man, with reddish hair and a single white streak blowing across his face.

_What is_ _he_ _doing here?_

The widow's mind raced, seizing upon explanation after explanation, trying to find the one that did not mean he was sent to spy on her, to make sure she was up to the simple task of poisoning some figs. _Gods!_ Did the Kindly Man think she was two and ten again? This assignment was far simpler than even her first! Surely he was not in doubt that she could fulfill her duties adequately…

Jaqen was now on the dock, walking swiftly away from her, carrying a long, narrow object upright, propped against his shoulder. It appeared to be some sort of wooden case. He did not spare her a single look.

_He wasn't sent to follow me_ , she realized. He had obviously retrieved something from the ship; something he had left stored there for over a week. But why? And where was he going now?

Her moment of hesitation lasted only the space of a breath and then her light footsteps carried her swiftly forward as she reasoned, _There's only one way to find out._


	11. Chapter 11

Through her years of training, the girl had learned that stealth, nimbleness, and a sort of keen awareness of all the moving parts of any situation were key to the expert application of a Faceless Man's specialized art. Any clumsy scout might blunder upon an enemy's camp and know then where his commander must attack, but his chances of secreting the information away to friendly hands would have been compromised by his carelessness. The widow was no clumsy scout. Though she had a reputation for her ability to slip down dark corridors and in and out of dim rooms without so much as the suggestion of a whispering footstep to betray her movements, it was in the crowd that her abilities truly shone. There was a genius to remaining unseen in a crowd—an innate knowledge of pacing; of the right facial expressions displayed at the right times; of who made a good shield and who drew too much attention to stand near.

As she followed behind Jaqen, keeping her distance, she expertly bowed her head in gracious acknowledgement of the kindly reverences paid her by those inclined to speak courteously to a passing widow of her station. She averted her face in mock anxiety and quickened her step when greeted by those less courteous (typically sailors, suggesting a way they might allay a widow's loneliness and grief) as a wealthy widow of Pentos was like to do. She allowed her gaze to be drawn to the children running about the streets as if longing for children of her own. She did all this while keeping Jaqen's quickly retreating form in her sight. He did not turn around but even this she believed to be due to her effective mummery. If she were strictly following him without thought of blending in, she felt certain he would sense something was amiss and she would be discovered.

King's Landing had its Street of Steel. In Braavos, there was the Armorers District, a collection of armorers' shops and smithies that lined the cobblestone street which flanked the Long Canal. The district's border started opposite the third bridge spanning the canal and ran the length of the waterway to the seventh bridge. The sheer number of shops put the Street of Steel to shame, but how else were the craftsmen to satisfy the demands of the numerous water dancers and pugnacious _Bravos_ for weapons? Not to mention the sailors and ships' captains that required repair or replacement of weapons damaged or lost while out to sea. Even the beautiful courtesans were known to carry delicate daggers with ornate, jeweled hilts (for show mostly, and perhaps occasionally to discourage an overly amorous admirer) and of course their guards were heavily armed with weapons less ornamented but more deadly.

As Jaqen's path led him into the Armorers District, the widow was faced with the dilemma of how to appear to _belong_ in an area so few women normally frequented, much less grieving, foreign widows. It would be much harder to blend among those patronizing the smithies. Fortunately, Jaqen and his wooden case disappeared into the first shop on the street, The Meerios Dinast Armory, home of the preeminent weapons maker in Braavos (and the whole of the Free Cities, Meerios liked to claim. His conceit was excusable as his assertion was valid. The Cat had seen an impressive sampling of weapons and armor flowing from his shop. The cost was great but as the only armorer in Braavos who could claim the skill to work Valyrian steel, it was justified).

Jaqen's fortuitous turn spared the widow from having to pretend she was only passing through the Armorers District en route to the Temple of the Moonsingers. She breezed past the main entrance of Meerios' and swiftly eased into the narrow alley separating the armorer's shop from his neighbor's. There was a row of small, high windows imbedded in the alley wall of the shop which let light into the front room where Meerios and his apprentices dealt with customers and proudly displayed a sampling of their craftsmanship. The windows were too high for a widow to reach, even on her toes, so the Cat silently scrambled atop a few discarded crates stacked in the alley and lifted her gauzy veil to peer through the dirty glass.

Jaqen faced away from her so she saw only his back but she could also see a young apprentice wiping his sooty hands against his leather apron as he spoke with her mentor. The young man smiled at Jaqen and nodded, appearing to agree with something her master was saying, then turned and called to the back of the shop. A moment later, Meerios appeared, his dark face a contrast to the snowy cast of his pointed beard. The apprentice spoke to his master and then it seemed that Jaqen was saying something to him which piqued Meerios' interest. The older man's eyes widened and then a delighted smile creased his face. The men continued their exchange as the Cat strained to read the armorer's lips. The glass was obscuring her view enough to make it an almost impossible feat so she swiped at it with her veil in annoyance. Her efforts improved her vision only a little and she stared intently at Meerios' mouth as a cat jumped onto the table where Jaqen had laid his case, momentarily distracting her. She glared at the cat then felt a little light-headed. Realizing she hadn't eaten in nearly a day, she barely had time to wonder if she should have had those figs after all when she suddenly found she could hear the men speaking. She closed her eyes to better concentrate on the words and could clearly visualize the men in her head.

"…and I assure you, the work will be _more_ than satisfactory. It will be _perfection_ ," Meerios was saying.

"And the colors will not be a problem?" Jaqen clarified.

"Child's play," the master armorer sniffed, almost offended.

"How long?" the Lorathi wanted to know.

"A month. Sooner if you don't object to some traces of the original color being left behind."

"It is not the original color," was all the assassin said, settling the matter.

"Very good. A month then. Meerios Dinast is always pleased to be of service to the Temple of Black and White."

The Lorathi nodded and turned to leave when the master armorer stopped him, asking, "Don't you wish to know the price?"

"It is of no consequence," Jaqen returned dismissively, then strode toward the door.

The Cat opened her eyes and tried to shake off the queasy feeling in her stomach, unsure if her lack of food or the confusion she felt at hearing their words was to blame (her confusion was both that she had not completely understood what the exchange was about and also that she should be able to hear them at all from the alley).

_One of the windows near me must have been open a crack_ , she reasoned as she deftly leapt from her perch to the ground. She ducked behind the crates, giving her master enough time to vacate the area before slipping from the alleyway back onto the cobblestone street.

She decided to travel through the Armorers District after all, following the Long Canal, headed towards the Temple of the Moonsingers. It was the shortest way back to the House of Black and White. All was quiet when she entered the temple so she continued on to her own cell to change from the widow's raiment into her own acolyte's robe. After replacing the dress and veil in the storage room, she headed for the small dining hall for the midday meal, exceptionally hungry—she had missed the previous supper due to an unwillingness to leave the training room and had left before the others broke their fast that morning so that she could prepare to do the Many-Faced god's bidding in the market. The others were already seated when she arrived and she saw that she would be getting those figs after all, in a salad with carrots and greens, alongside roasted pork and some of Umma's crusty bread. She sat down and laid into the food greedily, only noting after the growl in her stomach had been quieted that neither Jaqen nor the Kindly Man were present.

* * *

After sating her hunger, the girl wandered to the main temple area, stopping in a darkened corridor to study the pale statue of the Stranger upon its pedestal in a shadowy alcove. The rendering of this aspect of the seven was eerie, but peculiarly beautiful. The Cat cocked her head as she leaned in closer to the veiled face; so close that she could feel her own warm breath reflected off the cool stone. _Unknown and Unknowable_ a distant memory spoke in her mother's voice, or at least in what she told herself was her mother's voice. She could no longer be sure; it had been too long since she had heard it outside of her own head.

"Your people believe that the Stranger greets them upon their deaths, do they not?" the Kindly Man's voice softly asked.

"I have no people," she replied without turning around. "I am no one."

"You lie," he stated balefully. "And poorly."

She said nothing for a moment, then suddenly turned and told him, "In another life, my people held to the old gods. The North has little use for the Stranger."

He nodded solemnly, and then wondered aloud, "Will it be the Stranger or the old gods who greet a beautiful maid who it is said departed this mortal realm not long ago?"

She turned around as if to consider the question seriously while studying the Stranger but really meant to hide the small smile she felt burgeoning on her lips at the Kindly Man's words—a self-satisfied smile created of pleasure at her own success as well as amusement at the predictable composition of the principal elder's question.

"Neither," she decided, then considered the nature of the god in whose temple they were now standing and added, "Or, both."

"Just so," the kindly man agreed. "Where have you been?"

"The market," the girl answered simply.

"A lie of omission is still a lie," he reminded her.

She turned away from the Stranger once again and looked at the Kindly Man with wide, innocent eyes, sounding sincerely confused when she told him, "I don't know what you mean."

"Another lie, child. You smell of the sea."

She attempted to deflect his accusation by feigning offense.

"I'm _not_ a child!" she insisted.

"Another lie."

They stood staring at each other for an uncomfortable amount of time, and then the Kindly Man asked her to explain how the thing was done. She obliged him, detailing her choice of disguise, her trip to the market, and her interaction with the maid. Rather than offering praise, the Kindly Man simply nodded, then remarked on the ease of the assignment.

"It _was_ easy," she conceded. "Easy enough that any of the less-experienced acolytes might have accomplished this thing."

The question implied hung in the air between them but the Kindly Man did not deign to address it. Instead, he told her that she was expected by the waif who had mentioned something about needing to replenish the temple's supply of Sweetsleep. The Cat left him, bound for the room with workbenches and crucibles and other supplies for creating the toxins sometimes employed by their order to answer the prayers of devotees. As she drifted through the door into the workroom and saw the waif waiting impatiently for her, she wondered if she could create a more potent version of the poison that needed replacement. Her mind instantly became occupied with inventing new and simpler methods of delivery, devices easier to conceal than even a small glass vial. Gloves with tiny bladders in the tips of the fingers, or perhaps a powdered version of the poison that could easily be sprinkled on food amongst the salt with no one the wiser…

"I know that look," the waif told her sourly in Dothraki. "Stop daydreaming and start working. Let's just focus on replacing what you used today and think about your silly inventions later."

* * *

The girl left the waif as soon as the Sweetsleep supply was once again satisfactory and headed for the training room. As usual, she selected a blunted _Bravos_ blade from the racks along the wall and slid into what she had come to consider Syrio's stance. His words played in her mind. _Quiet as a shadow. Calm as still water._ She slashed powerfully at the air in front of her, continuing her mantra. _Quick as a snake. Strong as a bear._

"Fear cuts deeper than swords," she heard a voice say; a voice that was not Syrio's but might have been for the seamless way it blended with her memories at that moment.

She whirled around as if doing so was her intention all along, blocking a playful cut from Jaqen's broadsword.

"Practice is to improve the skills," he told her, sliding out of the reach of her blade and pointing his own toward the ground in front of him. This was his teaching-stance, so she dropped her sword arm to listen. "A man wonders why a girl would practice so often with the implement she has mastered while ignoring others with which she has merely _adequate_ technique."

"Mastered?" she barked. "You _disarmed_ me not two weeks ago when I was using this blade I've _mastered."_

He ignored her and tossed her a large, blunted sword. She caught it in her right hand and felt the weight of it pulling at her shoulder. Looking at him questioningly, she finally shrugged and moved to replace her slender _Bravos_ blade in its rack.

"A man does not mean for a girl to fight with the larger sword instead of the lighter," he told her, stopping her movement toward to racks.

"Well, what then?" she queried, confused.

"Use them both," he instructed her, quirking one corner of his mouth up.

"Both?" she laughed, clearly indicating her distaste for the idea. "But, the longsword is so heavy!"

"That is no longsword," he corrected. "That is a bastard sword, lovely girl"

"That's even _heavier,"_ she hissed, knowing it would almost exclusively be a two-handed weapon when wielded by a woman.

"Then get stronger," her master commanded without sympathy.

The apprentice looked at the Lorathi assassin, wondering if he had really suddenly decided she should master this sort of dual-handed technique that even the most seasoned of Faceless Men did not typically employ or if this was some sort of punishment for a transgression of which she was not yet aware. Before she had determined the answer, he was relating more instructions which only increased her apprehension.

"A girl will spar with these two swords every day until a man tells her otherwise."

"Jaqen!" she cried in disbelief, thinking he must be japing.

His answer was a swift blow with his broadsword, which she barely blocked by lifting both of her swords and forming a cross, catching his blade between them.

"Good," he grunted, pulling his blade away and spinning to come at her from her right, the side defended by the heavier bastard sword. She raised it but actually blocked his blow with her _Bravos_ blade, crossing her body with her stronger arm and the sword with which she was most comfortable, bastard sword lifted ineffectually at waist level, pointing straight ahead.

He clucked his tongue at her and swatted at her useless arm, telling her, "A girl makes herself a cripple. You must learn to use what you have. A girl has two arms, two sword-hands, and two blades."

"I'm fast enough to fight _two men_ with just _one_ arm, _one_ sword-hand, and _one_ blade," she retorted, ducking under his forceful cut, dragging the long bastard sword against the stone floor as she did. The screeching sound of it was awful and it made Jaqen grimace.

"Learn to be fast enough with _two_ blades," he urged, "and conquer a _roomful of men_."

She stood up straight, abandoning her defensive posture, dropping both arms so that the points of her blades rested lightly on the ground. She considered Jaqen's words, piercing his eyes with her own. After a moment, she gave a stiff nod, moved the new blade into her stronger hand while transferring her slender sword into her right, then regained her stance.

"Let's dance," she said, her words both invitation and assent.


	12. Chapter 12

After an hour of her master's specially devised torture, the girl collapsed on the floor of the training room, crying, "No more!" with an exhausted wheeze. Her left arm was remarkably sore, both from the exertion with the heavier training sword as well as Jaqen's relentless and forceful application of the flat of his own blade to it (which she had no doubt was driven by a desire for revenge, at least in part, for her coloring his own arm with a dark bruise during their first duel after his return to Braavos. He might scold her for her preoccupation with vengeance, but here was evidence that he harbored his own deep desire for spiteful retribution).

"A girl should have a hot bath," her mentor suggested casually. "Soreness will not be an excuse when we spar on the morrow. The heat will help… _some_."

She groaned and rolled over, pushing herself up onto her knees, feeling the tight ache in her biceps, especially her left. She looked at him, a mixture of loathing and respect in her eyes. He smirked at her and offered her his hand. She did not take it, instead placing the flat of her palms against her thighs (also tender, thanks to the incessant crouching and springing and dancing she had to employ in order to stay out of reach of the Lorathi's blade while trying to effectively use the unwieldy bastard sword). She looked at him, wondering if he would tell her what it was she wanted to know. Thoughts of trailing after him to the Armorers District entered her head but she pushed them aside, knowing she could not ask him about that. Not yet. But, perhaps if she got him talking about other things...

He dropped his extended hand to its customary place, thumb hooked into his sword belt, and then pivoted to return his own training sword to its place. When he turned to face her again, his look was expectant. His ability to read her awed her almost as much as it vexed her.

The girl laughed almost imperceptibly and mostly at herself, then said, "You expect me to make some declaration or ask some profound question. Am I so easy to decipher?"

He approached her slowly, eyes on her face, head tilting slightly as he neared her. His reach brought his hand to her chin, lifting it up so that she was gazing into his eyes, and then his rough thumb gently traced her bottom lip before tugging it from between her teeth.

"If a girl does not wish a man to know her thoughts, she must learn to _quit chewing her lip_."

She sighed, annoyed with herself, then this time accepted his offered hand, rising smoothly from the ground, giving no hint of the screaming discomfort in her muscles. As she returned her weapons to their proper racks, she repeated a marching chant in her head: _don't limp, don't limp, don't limp_. The pain was an accusation. Had her swordplay become _complacent_? Though she often exhausted herself with her training, slashing at, dancing around, and sparring with straw dummies, her fellows and imaginary enemies until she nearly dropped with fatigue, she could not recall the last time she had been so _sore._ Yes, a hot bath would definitely be forthcoming, and if the pain got any worse, maybe some Tears of Lys.

She turned from the weapons rack and walked to the low wooden bench in the room, dropping to it and then bending to stretch, reaching her fingers down to curl over her toes and trying to loosen the tight knots in her back and shoulders, nearly crying with the effort. She blew out her breath, long and slow, then, inhaling, sat up straight and faced her master.

"You promised me a tale after you returned and I've not yet heard it."

"Just so," he acknowledged. "A man has duties, as does a lovely girl. This tale takes time for the telling."

"I've got time now."

He raised his eyebrows, giving her a meaningful look as he said, "Unless a girl wishes to be bedridden tomorrow, she should get to her bath."

She scowled at his deferral even as he laughed at her impatience.

"Do not worry, impetuous child, you will have your tale. A man is thinking only of a girl's comfort. Gratitude would be a more befitting sentiment than exasperation, do you not agree?"

Her expression did not change and she silently stalked off, muttering, "The Others take the stupid bath!"

Jaqen's unrestrained laughter echoed down the long passageway after her.

* * *

The bath water was scalding hot when it was first poured but had now cooled to a comfortably warm degree as the Cat reclined in the soaking tub, under clouds of suds that had formed as she used the soap the waif had created to clean those who bathed here without leaving a scent on their skin. A light perfume could be enough to betray an assassin's hidden position if a sensitive enough nose were to take notice of it. The Cat wasn't sure what the correlation between "unscented" and "frothy" was but figured there must be one based solely on the volume of bubbles produced from routine washing during her baths.

The Cat's soaked, tangled mane, now clean, slapped wetly over the back of the large copper tub as she leaned back into the water, dripping enough to create a sizable puddle on the stone floor. She closed her eyes, neck-deep in the water and suds, and moaned as her deep aches diminished, though not enough to stop calling them _aches_. She turned her face to the side, toward the roaring fire in the large hearth meant to keep the room from becoming uncomfortably cold all while heating large kettles of water to replenish the bath as needed. Her cheek rested on the edge of the tub and she drifted off to sleep.

The daylight was waning as the riders approached the inn. They must have been deemed friendly because the children swarmed the porch at the sound of hooves and danced excitedly as the men leapt from their mounts and approached them. Gendry appeared in the doorway and the children swept aside to allow him passage down the steps into the yard where a new arrival with long, dark hair and beard greeted him. She could only partially see the new arrival's profile, but her keen eyes told her he was of the North. The Northman and Gendry embraced, pounding each other on the back with a sort of sincere and excited relief. The younger man then turned to greet the rest of the riders, voices murmuring, but words unintelligible no matter how much she pricked her ears.

Cautiously, she crept from the wood's edge toward the inn, sniffing at the air, trying to detect anything that would justify an attack. She found nothing. A handful of her cousins whined and slunk but followed her at a little distance while the rest of the pack rested safely in the woods, the nocturnal creatures not yet awake. She had covered half the distance between the tree line and the structure when she heard a large man in a tattered yellow cape shout in alarm.

"By the Seven! What in the bloody hells!"

The horses were disquieted, and then they were wild, leaving the riders to pull and jerk on their reins to prevent the distressed creatures from bolting. Her cousins growled, slaver running from their mouths, but they made no move towards the horses or the men. Gendry snapped his head up and looked toward her. His face showed surprise but not alarm. When two archers snapped up their weapons and aimed them at her, the large man stayed them with his words.

"No! Brothers, please! She'll not harm us!"

The Northman turned to fully face her and his expression of curiosity became one of confusion, then disbelief, and finally, _understanding_. A name echoed in her head at his look; a name and a voice, so familiar; words, half-remembered, from another lifetime. _You ride like a Northman, milady. Your aunt was the same, Lady Lyanna. But my father was master of horse, remember._

"Harwin," the girl in her thought. The wolf in her approached him slowly, snout down, sniffing. The scent was familiar but old, the memory fleeting. The scent belonged to a man who had been nearby when she and her sister and brothers were plucked from their mother's cooling carcass, rescued from the snow; a man who had lived within the same high, stone walls around which she and littermates had roamed so long ago; a man who had been among the large pack of men snaking their way south, away from the snows and weirwood of her home, when she had tasted lion's blood and lost her sister and her mistress all at once. She gave a little whine then pressed her wet snout into the Northman's calloused palm.

A collective breath was released by all those present, bows lowered (though not dropped), and the yellow-caped man's hoarse voice declared, "She's _monstrous!_ "

"Aye," Harwin agreed as the wolf pulled her snout from his hand and sat on her haunches, facing the crowd of men, nearly of a height with them in her seated position. _Calm as still water._ "She's a direwolf."

"What in Seven Hells is a _direwolf_ doing this far south?" one of the archers demanded.

Harwin studied the wolf and without taking his eyes off her, said, "A highborn lady once left her wolf pup behind along the Trident when I travelled south with Lord Eddard and King Robert. It seems the pup has grown up."

"Arya," Gendry whispered, so faintly that only Harwin and the wolf's sharp ears could hear. Harwin nodded in confirmation and Gendry added more loudly, "This _monster_ saved us when the outlaws raided here. None of the orphans were seriously harmed thanks to her and her pack."

"But… _How_?" the yellow-cloaked man rasped.

Harwin looked at Gendry and shrugged, addressing the riders.

"I hardly think we can afford to question any help that comes to us, no matter the form. We've all certainly seen things that defy explanation since joining the Brotherhood," the Northman said, looking meaningfully at each of them, then added, "I think we should reward her with a nice juicy lamb."

Several of the men looked uncomfortable. She could smell their fear but still sensed no threat. Gendry broke the tension by joking that if anyone actually _had_ a nice, juicy lamb, he'd be willing to fight the direwolf for it. The men laughed and the wolf gave a small, barking yelp that indicated she would accept such a challenge before standing and turning tail. She trotted back to the wood, her cousins following her unquestionable lead. As she passed the tree line, a sudden splashing caused her to jerk her head up from the edge of the tub, gasping in terrified surprise.

Heart pounding, the Cat saw Jaqen pouring a kettle full of near-boiling water into her tub, warming the bath that had become completely cool. Her eyes searched in confusion for the trees around her but found only stone walls, flickering torches, and a crackling fire burning low in the hearth. She was in the House of Black and White, and had been; not in the wood near the Inn at the Crossroads, no matter how much it felt as if she was. _These blasted wolf dreams!_

"What are you _doing_ here?" she demanded in an almost panting voice as her panic and confusion subsided, leaving her with a weak feeling in her limbs and a knot in her belly.

"Foolish girl, the question is what are _you_ doing here?"

What _was_ she doing? The truth was, she had no idea.

* * *

The Cat was relieved to see that the suds were still mounded on top of her bath despite the obvious passage of time since she had fallen asleep and dreamed of Nymeria and the Brotherhood, but still she felt uncomfortable with Jaqen's presence. She told herself not to be such a _child_ , that her master had no interest in her nakedness and that even if he had, she could not allow herself to be undone by an emotion as ridiculous as _embarrassment._ Emotions were weakness, except for rage (rage, when properly managed, was power, no matter what the Kindly Man said). She struggled to shake off her discomfort and find out if the Lorathi was after more than just the merriment he derived from catching her off her guard. Before she could ask him again why he was there, he spoke.

"A man wonders if a girl realizes that she _talks_ when she sleeps."

This was interesting. She had not realized this—no one had ever told her before. Sansa had often accused her of snoring while she slept, but never of talking. When she saw the look he was giving her, she determined that Jaqen didn't find her predilection for jabbering while she dreamed _interesting_. He seemed to find it _concerning_.

"Why are you looking at me like that? I'm sure I'm not the only person in the Free Cities who ever talked in her sleep."

"It is not what a girl _does_ that disturbs a man," he told her quietly. "It is what she _says_."

She pondered that for a moment but wasn't sure how she should respond. She knew what it was that she _dreamed_ and in truth, recalling her dreams was no different than recalling her memories of things she had actually done. The dreams, as ever, remained _so very realistic_. But she had no idea what she might be _saying_ while she was dreaming. He mentor did not seem inclined to tell her.

"What should I do?" she asked him. "I can't help that I dream and I can't help _what_ I dream."

He stiffly nodded, acknowledging the truth in her words, but they brought him no comfort. He then dropped to his knees next to her bath, his arm resting along the side of the copper tub as his fingers gripped the edge tightly. He leaned his face close to hers, his breath warm near her ear, all spice and lemon, as the timbre of his voice became low and urgent.

"A girl must speak of these dreams to no one," he nearly whispered, his words both a warning and a command. "Heed this advice and _follow it precisely_."

"Alright," she said without hesitation. His concern discomfited her and she couldn't quite puzzle out its cause. She resolved to unravel the mystery later, but now, wanted to leave it behind for a time and distract them from the serious atmosphere that had settled in the room. Looking up at his troubled face, she spoke in a lighthearted voice, reminding him, "You promised to tell me of your travels. I want to know where you were for a year and a half."

He continued looking at her with his brow creased, not fooled by her ploy, but after a moment, he pushed up to his feet. Stepping back, he casually knocked her piled clothes from the one chair in the room onto the damp floor and sat down to face her. Seeing her clothes soaking up some of the spilled bath water, she glared at him but said nothing. He gave her a mischievous smile and she rolled her eyes, groaning her aggravation.

"This tale takes time to tell, and a girl should be working on her skills, not wasting time with children's stories," he remarked with mock petulance, leaning over the pick up a dagger that sat atop her now-wet clothes. He twirled the knife, studying its plain hilt, testing the sharpness of the point of the blade against his fingertip.

She accepted his challenge, suggesting he tell her the tale in High Valyrian, making it a language lesson.

"No," he said, waving dismissively. "A girl's High Valyrian is too good. Do not waste a man's time."

She thought for a moment, then her eyes crinkled and her mouth curved slightly into a saucy smile as she baited him with her next suggestion.

"You could tell me in _Lorathi_."

She knew she had him then. Lorath, such a small place with a limited history of involvement with their order… Who concentrates on perfecting their Lorathi, aside from the Lorathi themselves? Hers was weak, or it had been when Jaqen left Braavos over eighteen moons ago. She had meant to amaze him with her improvement upon his return. There was no better time than right now, she realized.

He studied her intensely for a moment, trying to guess at her game. She stared right back at him, face confident, expression triumphant, all while thinking, " _Don't bite your lip. Don't bite your lip_." He breathed noisily, almost as if he were dramatically signaling his resignation, and then spoke.

"Fine. A man will tell his tale in Lorathi," he agreed, then paused before adding, "and a girl will tell a man which parts are lies."

_Gods_ , but he was irritating! A lesson in Lorathi _and_ this lying game? All while in a tepid bath, naked as her name day, with only some frothy bubbles and the warm air of the room between them? But now _he_ had _her._

"I think you have an unfair advantage in this game," she pouted. "I'm in the blasted _bath_."

"Silly girl, a man can only see your head and neck. You can see a man's whole body. Of course, in the past, a man had only to see your bottom lip to know your mind," he teased.

"Alright," she grudgingly accepted his terms. "But first, I have to know one thing. I've been wondering about it ever since you arrived back at the temple. Why a feast upon your return? I've seen brothers return dozens of times from missions, some gone even longer than you were, without so much as smile passing the Kindly Man's face. What was so different about _this_ mission?"

His eyes fairly twinkled as delight lit up his face at her question. He stopped playing with her dagger, clasping it to the arm of the chair with his hand as he pushed forward in his seat. He closed the gap between them to nearly nothing and examined her face for a few seconds before he spoke. She gave an involuntary gasp as he answered her.

"Dragons, lovely girl," he purred.


	13. Chapter 13

"Dragons!" she repeated, her voice excited.

Of course, there had been _rumors_ for years; enough of them that it was now generally accepted that there were indeed dragons and that they were the special pets of the _last_ dragon, Daenerys Targaryen (well, she was the last of the dragons if you didn't believe the tale of the infant son of Rhaegar surviving the sacking of King's Landing. An Aegon of some derivation was supposedly encamped in Dorne, plotting the overthrow of the Lion-in-Stag's-clothing currently sitting atop that ghastly iron monstrosity in the Red Keep, but whether this Aegon was _the_ Aegon was as yet undetermined).

What the exiled princess planned to _do_ with her fire-breathing creatures depended on who you asked. Some traders said she was burning her way through the slave cities (again), punishing those who had perverted her noble intention of freeing the slaves to create new bases of power for themselves by exploiting the weak (again). Others claimed she was sitting atop a great pyramid in Mereen, getting fat and old while surrounded by great piles of gold she demanded of her conquered subjects as tribute, lest she roast them alive with her beasts. Still others insisted her army was marching to the coast so that they might board ships to Westeros whilst their _khaleesi_ rode high above them, perched regally on the back of one of her deadly children.

The idea of riding a dragon thrilled the girl and she found herself wishing she might trade places with the silver queen, if only for a day.

"Wait, do you mean _dragon_ dragons or Targaryens?" the assassin’s apprentice wondered aloud.

"Both."

"Have we begun the lying game? Am I supposed to guess now if you're telling the truth now?"

He quirked up the corner of his mouth and half-laughed, "A man does not know. Are you?"

She studied his expression, played back his words and tone in his head, then said, " _Dragons_ is a true answer, because we hadn't started playing yet. And you told the truth when you answered that both types of dragons are part of the tale, but when you first said _dragons_ you meant _actual_ dragons."

"Good," he praised, then in his native tongue, said to her, "Now, tell this to a man again in Lorathi."

She gave a small growl but then did as she was bid. She was rewarded with a smile slowly creeping across Jaqen's face while his eyes widened in surprise and pleasure.

"A girl's Lorathi has improved," he remarked in the lilting, melodic tongue of his homeland.

It was her turn to smile. Every now and again, even an independent Cat appreciated being stroked. _And there was just something about hearing her master speak to her in his native tongue…_

The game continued in this way, Jaqen telling her about the journey across the Narrow Sea to Westeros, travelling first to King's Landing where he was sent to retrieve a certain artifact. She guessed his assertion was a lie.

"Is it?" he responded, giving no hint at the veracity of his statement, then continued his tale of his ride to Old Town, where he found evidence of dragons nearby.

"Nearby?" she questioned, trying to discern if this fantastic bit of the story contained any truth. The logical part of her mind told her that it wasn't possible. There had been no word of dragons landing in Westeros. Surely something would have drifted across the Narrow Sea and to her ears by now. She had spent enough time wandering around Ragman's Harbor that she felt certain she would have picked up some word of this from the western sailors that poured in and out of Braavos. They liked to talk, especially in the taverns, and it was often their words that the Cat dutifully repeated to the Kindly Man when called upon to report the three new things she learned during her outings. None of these loquacious seafarers had ever mentioned anything about dragons in _Westeros_ , though.

She leaned her head and shoulders over the side of the tub nearest her mentor, resting her forearms along its edge, one atop the other. Pinching her face into a look of intense concentration, she stared into Jaqen's bronze eyes, studied the set of his mouth, then gasped and pulled slightly back as she realized he was telling the truth. A small shiver went through her. _Dragons. In Westeros!_

Her master said nothing, but rose from his seat and approached the low fire. Using the thick leather gloves set on the mantle, he picked up the last of the kettles of hot water and poured it into her bath, the level rising almost to the top now. The new warmth crept from her toes up to her legs and she sighed with contentment. She pulled back from the edge of the tub and leaned once again into her reclined position, water sloshing over the edge, chasing Jaqen's heels as he settled back into his chair. She held up her fingers in the firelight and regarded their pruned surfaces, then turned to look at him.

"How did you know they were nearby?"

His fingers formed a pyramid pressed against his lips, elbows resting on his thighs as he leaned towards her, considering his next words. Sliding his fingertips from his lips to the underside of his chin, he spoke, answering her question and continuing his tale.

"There is a candle in Old Town," he began.

"A _candle_ ," she interrupted, a hint of disbelief in her voice. "In _Old Town_."

"Just so. A dragonglass candle."

"A _dragonglass candle,_ " she repeated, the pitch of her voice climbing, clearly conveying her doubt about the importance of this claim.

"A girl may guess that a man is lying or telling the truth but if she insists on merely repeating a man's tale word for word in that grating tone of voice, perhaps it is not a lesson in languages and lies she needs, but a lesson in manners."

"Sorry," she mumbled.

He looked at her before dropping his hands to his knees and pushing back in his seat so that he was comfortably reclining, and then crossed his leg so that one heel came to rest upon the other knee. She nearly vibrated with her impatience but stifled both the desire to yell at him to get on with it and the desire to bite her lip.

"This dragonglass candle is an ancient artifact and came to the Citadel from Valyria before the Doom."

"Well, _obviously_ before the Doom," she muttered in the Common Tongue, flicking a cloud of foam from under her chin with her thumb and forefinger.

He flashed her a warning look, and she groused inwardly that the only time he wasn't hard to read was when he was angry with her. She made her expression appropriately obsequious and cast her eyes down toward the waning bubbles slowly undulating atop the newly warmed water.

Satisfied with her gesture, her mentor continued, giving her a short history of obsidian candles. As she listened, it dawned on her that what he was telling her might not be important to the tale but was instead a sort of punishment for her characteristic display of impertinence. If he intended to chasten her and improve her attitude, she wished he would do it with a blade or even a well-placed slap. Anything was preferable to his attempt to _bore_ her to death. What she learned was not useful to determining how he knew that dragons were _nearby_. All he had said of interest was that the dragonglass candles only burned when dragons were in the world. _Anywhere_ in the world. How could he have used this wondrous device smuggled all the way from Valyria ( _before_ the Doom) to determine proximity?

She closed her eyes and focused her concentration on his words and the tone in which he delivered them. She recalled his eyes, the way he narrowed them slightly before speaking, then opened them wide as the words left his lips. Guileless. He was telling the truth. She opened her eyes, leaving them focused on the ceiling, and told him so.

"Yes, lovely girl. This is the truth."

"But I still don't understand…" she started in her native tongue, then corrected herself and repeated in Lorathi, "I still don't understand how you were able to tell that the dragons were _nearby_ simply because a candle was burning which tells you that dragons _exist_."

"A man has seen this same candle before," he replied, not expanding on the _when_ or the _how_ of that. "Before, when the dragons were new to the world and far from Westeros. Then, this candle burned low but bright. This last time, the candle flame was high; so high it nearly scorched the ceiling of the chamber in which it sat, and was so bright that it was hard for a man to look upon."

"That's the truth," she determined and he acknowledged her correctness with a slight nod. "But there's more."

"Very good," he complimented. "A girl is more and more perceptive. There _is_ more."

She awaited his revelation, trying not to give him the satisfaction of displaying her impatience overtly. She arranged her face in what she hoped was a slightly expectant yet only mildly interested look, but worried he could see the visible pounding of her heart against her breast. _Dragons in Westeros, evidenced by the behavioral changes of a magical Valyrian candle, and there was_ more _._ Her mind fairly screamed at him: _tell me, tell me, TELL ME_!

"A man has seen."

His words stirred in her head as she tried to comprehend his meaning. At first, she thought he had not yet completed his thought; that he was merely pausing for effect. She looked at him and could tell then that his sentence was finished. His face was a flat, calm mask, revealing nothing. Has seen _what?_ He had seen the candle. Twice, apparently. _A man has seen._ He had seen…

"Jaqen, you saw them? You saw the dragons? Are you saying that you _saw_ the _dragons_ in _Westeros?_ "

"A man has said. Is this the truth?"

"Seven hells, Jaqen! You've been back two weeks…"

"Nearly," he corrected.

"You've been back _nearly_ two weeks and there are bloody _dragons_ in Westeros and _this_ is the first time you think to tell me?"

She was beside herself, trembling in rage, in disbelief, in terror. She was Arya, worried Sansa might roast alive if she wasn't dead already; she was the wolf, worried that she could not protect the innocent and her cousins from such monsters; she was the Cat, worried her skills would never be put to the use she longed for if her enemies were turned to ash before she could reach them; she was… she was…

She was _no one._

All at once, her rage left her and the cooling water prickled her skin. She was _no one_ , and _no one_ was not concerned with what happened in Westeros. _No one_ cared only to do the bidding of the Many-Faced god. _No one_ practiced reading faces and voices and understanding the truth and the lies in men's words. _No one_ could slaughter and kill and bathe in the blood as easily as a maid giggled when a handsome knight smiled at her. No one turned to her master and bade him continue.

He examined her carefully, not speaking despite her urging him to finish his recounting of his travels. She seemed, for once, truly… _faceless_. He felt something akin to pride at seeing this transformation. She had, at least in this moment, somehow achieved what over four years of training had been building toward. And yet... he was surprised to discover that he was… _not glad_?

_How very odd,_ the master assassin thought to himself. _How… extraordinary._

He wasn't sure if his strange response was because he was more attached than he would like to admit to the chaotic hybrid she had been all this time, part Faceless Man, part tempest wrapped in wolf skin, or if it was that he suspected her newly achieved state could not last through the end of his tale. His face was sad, but only for a tiny moment, then he told her of his journey to Dorne to see the dragons.

Jaqen had borrowed the face of a Dornish novice who had crossed his path in Old Town (the girl did not question him on the particulars of that deed) and procured a fast horse, riding hard for Sunspear, both horse and rider nearly keeling over with exhaustion by the time they arrived. The city was abuzz with talk of dragons, a sort of frightened excitement at being so near such creatures. Still, talk was talk and he needed more proof than gossip in the streets. After a day's rest and hearing several accounts of the dragons being kept around the abandoned ruins of the Tower of Joy, he backtracked and picked his way through the mountains, intent on seeing them with his own eyes.

On the third day, as he approached Yronwood, his eye was drawn to the sky where three strange birds danced together. It was only after a few moments of observation that he determined they were not birds but were indeed the great dragons, so high in the sky and far away as to be barely visible. He continued on across the Red Mountains for another day and spotted them several more times, looming larger as his approach drew him closer to their temporary nest. The landscape en route to the Prince's Pass increasingly showed signs of the new occupation: burnt stands of trees, discarded animal carcasses comprised of little but charred bone and scraps of blackened fur, and a few smoldering peasant shacks abandoned along the route. It was enough to convince him of what the candle had indicated.

"A man had the proof his own eyes provided, and so veered away from his course and headed northward toward the Reach."

She didn't even look at him before she said, "You lie."

"What lie does a man tell?" his amused voice inquired.

"You did _not_ leave after seeing some burnt patches of ground and some dragon-shaped forms in the distance. You continued on your path. You went to the Tower of Joy."

"Why does a girl believe these things?" he asked noncommittally.

"Because I know you," was her only answer.

The sound of those words, spoken softly in his native tongue, pricked at something deep inside of him.

_Extraordinary, indeed._

He smiled once more at her but she did not turn to see it. Her white shoulders peeked out from beneath the high water and nearly exhausted soapy froth. He noted a small scar, old and well-healed but still visible, on the snowy flesh where her right shoulder became her arm. Gingerly, he dropped again to his knees near her side and reached out to trace the scar's path lightly with his two fingers.

"How did a girl come by this?" he asked her softly, wondering if he was imagining the slight trembling he felt as his fingers brushed her flesh. He lifted his eyes from his own fingers caressing the old wound to her face and watched as her lips parted slightly and she drew in a light, shallow breath before replying to his question in a near whisper.

"I got it in a fight with a man I had to kill because he wouldn't _finish his thrice-damned story."_

By the end, her whisper had become a growl.

He snorted, telling her that she was a terrible liar and then acknowledged that he had indeed continued on to the ruins of the fabled tower as she had guessed.

"I didn't guess," she told him. "I _knew_."

He bowed his head in deference to her powers of appraisal then told her that in the Prince's Pass, he had seen _two_ dragons.

"But in the sky, you saw three. Is one of these accounts a lie?"

"No, lovely girl. The dragons a man saw at the tower had silver hair and amethyst eyes."

She thought about that for a moment before inferring, "Daenerys _and_ Aegon?"

"Just so."

She considered the information he had revealed to her. There were two Targaryens and three dragons in Dorne. The intelligence was important enough to the order that a feast was thrown for Jaqen simply for bearing it home. What did it mean? Her head was swimming and she bowed it under the weight of all the questions she had to ponder and answers she needed to find to satisfy her curiosity. It was the only way to put to rest her churning thoughts. Her mental list ticked off in her mind's eye involuntarily. _Why were the wolf dreams suddenly so frequent? What was Jaqen so anxious about all the time? Why did the rat-faced boy hate her? Why did Umma think that sparring with Jaqen was the equivalent of going all swoony and weak-kneed around him? What had Jaqen brought back from his trip to Westeros and why had he delivered it to Meerios? Why did the order care about dragons in Westeros? And why in the Seven Hells did she suddenly struggle to quit chewing her lip so much?_

Jaqen interrupted her internal monologue, his face moving closer to hers, dipping his fingers lazily into her bath water, testing the temperature as he murmured, "A man has said this tale takes time for the telling. A girl will soon be too chilled to listen if he continues."

"I'm not bothered by the cold," she snapped at him defensively. "You forget, I was born in _Winterfell_. Even after all these years, there is still winter in my veins."

"A girl may be immune to cold, but how does she feel about the desertion of all that protects her modesty?"

She looked down at her bath and saw that it was true. The frothy mounds of soap bubbles had been reduced to a thin, patchy layer of foam, floating across the surface of the cool water in a perilously haphazard pattern. She cursed the blush she felt creeping up her neck to her cheeks and tried unsuccessfully to call up a bravado she did not feel.

"What? Do I embarrass you, Jaqen?" she spoke in a tone that tried to be teasing but fell somewhere closer to mortified.

"A man does not embarrass so easily but he fears if a girl turns any pinker, she will be mistaken for a suckling pig by the house's cook. A man does not often experience sadness but he would be _most aggrieved_ to find his favorite little Cat served up for supper with a plum in her mouth."

His provocation produced in her a combination of extreme vexation and horror as she gave him a growling yelp, punctuated by a small wave of water splashing over the side of the tub, aimed at his chest. He tossed his head back and guffawed unrepentantly as he leapt to his feet to avoid her further soaking his clothes. She was irritated to see that most of the water with which she had just tried to douse him ended up streaking its way through the grout canals between the stones of the floor and had settled against her already damp clothes, slowly seeping further into the pile.

Her expression was icy as she raised her accusing glare from the sopping clothes to his smiling face. Laughing, her master raised his eyebrows, inviting her comment.

"You… are… _insufferable!_ " the girl spat. "You're… you're just like a… like a giant _child!_ "

His laughter settled into a satisfied smirk as his eyes trailed down the length of her bath. His thumbs hooked into his sword belt and as his eyes traced back up toward her face, he countered, "It may be that a man is like a giant, insufferable child…"

She followed the path his eyes had taken with her own, realizing with growing dismay that the last of her bubbles had fizzed away and all that lay between his stupid bronze eyes and her stupid bare skin was the stupid cold water in which she lay, stretched out and shivering. Instinctively, her arms crossed over her chest, pressing against her breasts tightly, forming a sort of décolletage of wet, bruised limbs as she glared murderously at him, flushing bright red to the roots of her hair.

"...but a girl has definitely become a woman grown," he finished.


	14. Chapter 14

Jaqen had left her in the bath, freezing and fuming, his luxuriant and deep laugh causing her to bristle as if she were wearing Nymeria's skin. She bellowed after him not to think that this was finished; that she fully expected to get the rest of the story, and soon. That annoying chortle echoed down the hall as he left to do whatever it is that exasperating masters do after they've thoroughly humiliated their apprentices. She resolved that she would hear the rest of this story when she was _clothed_ and if he thought she would play another lying game with him in exchange for information, then he was sorely mistaken. He _owed_ her.

She stood, dripping and shivering, cascades of water plunging down her body and into the frigid tub. She stepped carefully onto the slick stones and grabbed the soft linen cloth she would use to dry herself, slinking to a spot in front of the dying fire. She stepped as close to the inner hearth as she could without burning herself, trying to warm up as she rubbed the droplets from her goose pimpled flesh. Once dry, she began to feel the heat from the embers inching up her legs and wrapped herself in the damp linen cloth, walking around the copper tub to retrieve her clothes. They were beyond help. She had to wring out the excess water that was soaking them, the cold water dripping into the tub as she twisted the garments over and over. She tossed them into a dry corner of the room and sat in the chair where Jaqen had been only minutes before, using her fingers to comb out the tangles in her dark hair. She could still detect his faint scent lingering in the air, all ginger and lemons and cloves.

Sighing in resignation, she wrapped the linen more securely around her form, picked up her wet robe, small-clothes, and dagger and then used all of her cat-like prowess to creep to her cell undetected so as not to expose her barely clad body to a host of brothers' eyes. Once there, she hung her clothes around her small room to dry, then found her sleeping shift and exchanged it for the damp linen wrap. Groaning, she collapsed onto the bed, eyelids already heavy, too weary and sore to even contemplate supper. She closed her eyes as she drew her soft woolen blanket over her, clutching it under her chin, and thought of all she had seen and heard that day. She fell asleep wondering what it was that Jaqen had been carrying in his wooden case but it was dragons that dominated her dreams.

Upon awakening the next morning, she was certain she was dying. She was confused as to why she nearly collapsed in agony when she pushed up from her bed to attempt to sit and then the memory of sparring with Jaqen came back. _Seven Hells!_ If this was the pain _with_ a long soak, she couldn't fathom what it would have been like without it!

Gingerly, she used her right arm to push up, guarding the tender left arm and relying on her abdominal muscles to help pull her into a seated position. Sucking in a deep breath, she stood up and cried out then stifled the sound, biting back her whimpers and cursing her own weakness. She was unable to comfortably lift her arms high enough to braid her hair again so she left it loose. It fell around her shoulders and down her back in the wild, dark waves that were a consequence of sleeping with it wet and unbound. She took rather longer than she should have to get dressed and then forced herself to stretch as much as she could tolerate, hoping to loosen up and become… _functional._ After all, Jaqen had made it clear that she would be sparring with that bloody bastard sword again today and in her current state, she was like to be too slow to do much more than take a beating.

Carefully, the girl made her way to the small dining hall to break her fast. She found she was rather hungry, probably due to a combination of all the exercise the day before and missing her supper once again. When she arrived in the chamber, several of her brothers were there already, filling their plates with an assortment of Umma's breakfast offerings. There was an egg pie with chopped sardines, toasted bread with honey, stuffed grape leaves, and cider. The Cat was so famished that she couldn't have cared less if there was raw goat innards and spoiled mare's milk, she dove into the food with gusto. The smell was divine. The taste was even better, at least for the few bites she chewed slowly enough to taste. She noted with glee that her jaw muscles weren't the least bit sore.

"You're moving awfully slow this morning, Cat," Loric observed, reaching across her for another piece of bread. "Are you unwell?"

Loric was a young Myrish boy, very pretty and nice enough but new to the order. He was rather more chipper than was appropriate for an assassin in training and he still liked to talk. A lot.

"Just sore from training, Loric," the Cat replied, leaning back in her chair and enjoying the feeling of a full belly.

"What? How could _you_ get sore? All you ever _do_ is train!" the boy declared.

"Let that be a lesson to you, boy," came Jaqen's voice from behind them, startling her. The Cat didn't need to turn to look at him in order to know he was wearing a cocky smirk, revealing his dimple. Besides, it hurt too much to turn around. "There is always something for the improving."

He rounded the table and dropped easily into the chair opposite the Cat. She looked across the table at him, embarrassment and vexation warring on her face. She pushed her head against the high back of her chair and sighed deeply, waiting for his inevitable jape. At least she wouldn't have to tolerate it on an empty stomach.

"A girl is wearing her hair differently today," the Lorathi remarked innocently. "A man is not acquainted with the intricacies of fashion. Is this the new style among the young ladies?"

She pursed her lips and said nothing, trying to maintain her dignity. Loric was not helping the matter with his enthusiastic commentary.

"I noticed that too, Cat! It looks very nice, but it doesn't seem practical. Can you fight like that?"

She doubted if she could fight at all, and not because of her hair, but mustered as much composure as she could and told the boy, "You must be ready to fight in any condition. Your enemy will not wait for you to dress your hair before attacking."

She thought the answer very appropriate and congratulated herself on her poise as well as her relevant and useful impromptu advice. Loric seemed to agree as his wide eyes shone upon her with a respect that bordered on adoration. He was probably the only one of her brothers who didn't fear her—he simply wanted to _be_ her. She felt fairly self-satisfied until her master's voice sounded over her internal applause.

"Well met. A girl has the right of it. You must be ready at _any_ time," he agreed, his eyes crinkling at their corners as they met hers. "And to that point, a girl will meet a man in the training room in one half hour."

She suppressed an overwhelming urge to groan as Jaqen picked up a piece of warm bread, poured a few drops on honey on it, then popped it in his mouth as he rose from the table to leave. When he passed behind her seat, he bent to whisper in her ear.

"A girl will have to disarm a man if she wishes to hear the rest of his tale today."

Her mouth drew into a tight line and she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to battle the frustration welling up within her.

"What did he say?" Loric whispered to her after Jaqen exited the room.

"He said I'm never going to hear the end of his story," she sighed.

* * *

 

The Cat left the small dining hall shortly after her master did, bound for the temple courtyard, hoping that stretching in the warm sun would restore enough flexibility to her sore muscles that she might not completely shame herself in the training room. Standing by the fountain, she slowly bent forward, grasping her ankles and feeling the ache wash over her. Still, the sun warmed her through her jerkin and presently, she felt a little better. She stood back up and began moving her arms in slow circles, gritting her teeth at the stabbing and pulling she felt in her sword arm. Well, her _left_ sword arm. As her master had pointed out, _a girl has two sword arms._

Voices echoing in the distance pulled her away from her thoughts. She had believed she would be alone in the courtyard but apparently, others wished to enjoy the morning outdoors as well. She did not relish the idea of being questioned about why she was stretching in the sun (as it was not part of her usual morning routine), so she slipped quietly beyond the fountain, into the shady stand of fruit trees and tall, ornamental grasses on the far end of the courtyard. After a short time, the Kindly Man came into view, walking with Jaqen. As they approached, she could clearly hear their conversation.

"With all due respect, a man does not believe she is ready. You said as much yourself not two weeks ago," Jaqen was saying, his expression tense.

_Why was he so easy to read? It was so unlike him to have an unguarded expression._

"Indeed," the Kindly Man remarked. "Nevertheless, the time is fast approaching when something must be done."

"A man begs more time."

"Brother, there are things you do not yet understand."

Jaqen turned to give the Kindly Man a curious look, his question unspoken but plain nonetheless. The Kindly Man regarded his brother with fondness and rested his hand upon the Lorathi's shoulder as they came to a halt in their walk, between the fountain and the Cat's hidden location.

"We are all but servants of the Many-Faced god," the Kindly Man began. "We have our roles and we must play them. He does not bend to our whims but _we_ to _his_. We must be ready when he calls us."

The apprehension on her mentor's face was plain. She could see it from her hiding place where she stood _quiet as a shadow,_ afraid to breathe lest she be detected, mind a-whirl. The Kindly Man's words echoed in her thoughts. _There are things you do not yet understand._ What things? She engaged in the useless exercise of trying to read the Kindly Man's face-that-was-not-his-face.

The Kindly Man could see her master's concern as well and attempted to assuage it.

"Worry is not for us, Brother," he told Jaqen softly. "This distress does not become you. If it would ease your burden, there is an assignment in Pentos. A certain wealthy merchant… I had intended to send one of your brothers since you had only just returned, but if you like…"

"No," Jaqen interrupted immediately. "A man would stay in Braavos, and do what he can. Has the time been determined?"

"Oh, I would say not much more than a month," the Kindly man remarked mildly as they began to walk back toward the temple. "Yes, I think a month will be long enough."

"The other Westerosi has been training twice as long," Jaqen pointed out.

"Yes, that's true," the principal elder agreed. "I think perhaps his time has come as well."

The men faded from the girl's view and soon she could detect no voices. She waited for several minutes before slowly emerging from her concealed spot, all soreness forgotten. Her heart was pounding. She was certain that they were speaking of her. Her _and_ the rat-faced boy. The Cat's first inclination was to think that they were arguing, in their way, about her suitability for the final trial and taking her vows. Part of her wanted to be angry with Jaqen for questioning her readiness, yet there was definitely something _more._ That something more disturbed her, even though she did not understand it. Her master seemed as if he was... trying to protect her? His worry was becoming _her_ worry, even though she did not comprehend the source of it. She was left with a sense of cold dread in her gut.

* * *

 

She arrived in the training room at the appointed time and found her master there, pulling swords from the racks. He tossed her the bastard blade and her preferred _Bravos_ blade without a word. She caught them and watched as he pulled a sword for himself from the rack and tested its weight.

"Do you need padding?" he asked without a trace of derision. His expression seemed serious. He was being... strange.

"No," she told him. "I prefer to fight without it."

He nodded, then without further delay, began his attack.

He seemed to be everywhere all at once and she found herself moving more than she would have liked to avoid his blows, but was pleased to see that she _could_ avoid them for the most part. Her muscles ached fiercely but the peculiar encounter she had witnessed in the courtyard coupled with her master's out of character behavior seemed to be filling her with tingling adrenaline and this enabled her to perform better than she had expected to. The bastard sword remained ungodly heavy in her hand but she managed to use it more frequently and more effectively than she had just the day prior.

Jaqen had no japes for her, no baiting, no gentle teasing. His voice was devoid of laughter and no smile creased his face. He offered only the occasional piece of grunted advice. _Keep your sword up. Watch your stance. Straighten your wrist. Pull your elbow in. Bend, don't squat, you'll recover quicker._ She had never seen him so intense or humorless in all their many years together. She had never seen him go so long without referring to her as _a girl._ This only served to increase that dread she had carried into the room with her. It left her limbs feeling numb and shaky but she found that _numb_ wasn't as bad as the excruciating pain she had experienced upon awakening earlier in the morning. Still, he managed to disarm her twice in a short span of time, both times knocking the weighty bastard sword out of her left hand. In each instance, he simply stopped and waited while she retrieved it, then began his assault once she had regained her stance. On and on this went, the girl dancing just beyond the point of her master's sword, or blocking it with a groan as the singing steel vibrated up her arm and through her abused muscles, or scrabbling to retrieve one blade or the other (and once, both) from the cold stones of the floor. Her loose hair flew and floated, here sticking to the sweat on her brow, there covering her eyes, blinding her for a second and allowing her master to get in a solid thrust, poking her ribs.

As they danced around the room, her muscles seemed to loosen up and after a time, she had an uncontrollable urge to vent the pent-up anxiety born of the avalanche of unanswered questions and mysteries and intrigues that suddenly seemed to be crushing her. She was taken by a sudden burst of energy and as Jaqen delivered one of his powerful cuts, she slid on her knees under his arm, avoiding his blow with a move she had learned by watching the rat-faced boy, of all people. As she glided under his blade, she leaned back, arching gracefully as she instinctively brought her swords up in two opposing arcs which intersected at the point of his weapon. Her crossed steel shrieked as it slid swiftly down the blade of his sword to where he gripped the hilt. With a twist of her wrists, her steel grasped his and wrenched it from his hand, throwing it across the room where it struck the wall then fell to the floor with a thunderous crash of steel and stone.

As her momentum brought her to rest behind him, she rolled over and sprang up with both swords at the ready, mouth agape, hardly believing _it had worked_. Jaqen seemed to share her opinion as he stood before her, stunned, staring at his sword upon the ground then at his empty hand, then back at his sword. He turned to face her, his countenance a mirror image of hers-mouth agape, eyes projecting frank disbelief. Then, hair spread gloriously around her face and shoulders, pale cheeks now flushed with exertion and elation, she lifted the bastard sword's blunted tip to his heart, gently prodding him as she spoke the word neither of them had expected to pass her lips that day.

"Yield."

They stared at each other in silence for a while, unmoving but for the heaving of their chests until the Lorathi bowed his head in acknowledgement of the girl's victory. The Cat then collected both of her swords in her right hand and hooked her left thumb into her sword belt in a familiar gesture.

"I believe you owe me a tale," she said.


	15. Chapter 15

Though he did not again require the lying game of her (or a language lesson, for that matter), the Cat's master insisted she continue her training before she could stop and take time for the telling of stories. He did not insist on making the continuation of his tale contingent upon the _successful_ completion of a lesson of another sort but he _did_ assert that he would not engage in the entertainment until the lesson was complete. It was for this reason that the Cat had become a widow once again and would soon be walking the cobblestone lanes toward Ragman's Harbor on the arm of a faceless ship's captain who had pledged to take her back to Pentos ( _should anyone ask, lovely girl_ ).

Jaqen had offered her the option of borrowing a face for this task, insisting that her true identity be protected, especially around the harbor where any of the Westerosi captains who might be acquainted with the _Stark look_ could possibly see her and bear the tale back to those who might wish to do her harm. She had started to reply with something akin to, "Let them come and we'll see who does the harm!" but knowing her master's mood was uncharacteristically dour ever since his morning walk with the Kindly Man, she instead told him she preferred a more conventional disguise for such an outing. She did not relish the notion of enduring all of the discomforts that accompanied the wearing of the face of another for an errand that was to last only a short time. He nodded his consent and she departed the training room for the storage vaults where she might find a suitable costume. Upon her arrival at their appointed meeting place (the steps of the temple), she was comfortably enrobed in the widow's garb once again, its gauzy veil adequately concealing her _Stark look_ from any potential singing birds.

When her master felt her arrive silently at his side, he grasped the edge of the delicate veil and lifted it closer to his eye for inspection, a phantom of a smile tickling his lips. It was the most mirth she had seen him display since breakfast and she hoped it meant his strangely intense mood was improving. He seemed to be appraising her choice of attire and then he brushed his thumb over a small patch of the diaphanous shroud that fell near her left shoulder and which seemed to be soiled. She wondered at his attention to this detail. After a moment, he dropped the edge of the material and watched it flutter back toward her body. When the dark veil lay lightly against her arm once again, he turned his eyes towards her face and spoke.

"Widow’s garb? Are you mourning the loss of your dignity, my little Cat?" he asked, a hint of laughter evident in his voice. "A man spied a girl tiptoeing away from it last night with bare feet and a damp linen wrap."

She inwardly grimaced, cursing his superior stealth, but looked at him shrewdly through her veil and countered, "No, I'm mourning the loss of _your_ dignity. I saw it die today when a little girl who looks more like a suckling pig took your sword from your hand and threw it across the room."

His lips spread into a true smile as he responded with twinkling eyes, "A girl should not take offense at a japing remark made in the bath. You should know, suckling pig is a man's favorite."

Her expression beneath the veil was sour and he thought he detected a faint huff escape from this little widow. As he listened and watched for any further sign of emotion, he jabbed at her once more, wondering how much she might take before losing her composure completely.

"Besides, a man's dignity was not wounded by a lucky move that could not be duplicated if a girl _or_ a suckling pig had a thousand more tries in which to do so."

She felt the truth of his words settle dully in her chest. He felt their lie sharply in his. Perhaps to distract himself from the unpleasant feeling ( _could this be guilt?_ ) born of being less than honest with his pupil, he attempted to soften the sting of his words by teasing her gently.

"But, a man is willing to give a girl a thousand more tries for the small price of blushing so prettily again. Of course, that might require another bath…"

"Ooomph!" was the sound he heard escape her lips as she punched him in the shoulder. He made a show of rubbing the spot as if in pain, but she knew better. Beneath her veil, she rolled her eyes at him even though she was sure he couldn't see her gesture. Then, his face lost its playfulness as he prepared to take on his own disguise.

As she watched, he changed his Lorathi countenance into that of a weathered ship's captain claiming Pentoshi extraction. She shook her head, feeling, as ever, a deep sense of wonder at witnessing this feat. He had merely placed the fingertips of his right hand gently against his forehead and then closed his eyes as if paying reverence to a great king or his god. He allowed his palm to drift slowly downward over his face as he exhaled almost imperceptibly. By the time his hand had reached his chin, he was someone else entirely. He seemed to change his face as easily as she drew breath.

"You _must_ teach me to do that someday," she murmured for the hundredth time. No, the _thousandth._

He smiled at her, promising her once again that she would learn the secret of this skill after she had taken her vows. As they descended the steps of the temple together, leaving the ebony and weirwood doors behind, Arya's eyes flickered briefly to the loose stone which served to hide Needle from view. She hoped the oilcloth she had wrapped around her beloved weapon was protecting it from the rust that was almost inevitable in the sometimes stifling humidity of Braavos.

As they left the House of Black and White behind, he took her arm, displaying the common courtesy a man of his station was sure to pay a woman of hers. They walked at a leisurely pace but did not speak for several minutes. The widow finally cleared her throat and asked her mentor what it was that he expected of her today.

"There are two Faceless Men and an acolyte of the house wandering about Ragman's Harbor today," he told her as they strolled toward the docks. "It is a widow's task to identify them."

"This is a game I've not played before," she mused. "What is the point of it?"

Her master turned his false face towards hers, seeming to see her despite the veil. The face that studied hers was brown, lined, and bore a few old scars. Coarse grey hair fringed the forehead and curled around the ears. The two-pronged beard that jutted forth from his chin was a mixture of black and grey and looked even more grizzled than the windblown hair atop his head. But the eyes were warm bronze, full of fire and purpose and something else… Something she could not quite name. The eyes were undeniably those of her mentor, and they pierced hers as he answered her question.

**"** If you cannot tell a man's real face from his false, then you will never be ready. And a girl _must_ be ready **."**

There was a quiet urgency in his words that demanded acceptance and she believed him instantly—it was undeniable; she _must_ be ready. But for what?

* * *

 

The widow and the ship's captain seemed to be negotiating the fee for safe passage back to Pentos as they strolled arm in arm along the docks of Ragman's Harbor. The captain-who-was-Jaqen told the widow-who-was-the-Cat that she could expect a respite from her training during which he would recount his travels to her after she had correctly identified the strangers-who-were-really-brothers. She might have argued that he owed her the rest of the story regardless of the outcome of this exercise, but his earlier mood cautioned against defiance, at least temporarily. She did not wish to see his mirthless demeanor return. So, she engaged in the challenge obediently, using her peripheral vision to scan the crowd as she addressed the captain, looking off as if appreciating the way the sun made the water glitter and sparkle as if beaded with dancing gemstones when she was really examining the sailors and passengers waving down from ships' decks, and comparing the attire of the people around her with the catalog of stored garb in the vaults of the House of Black and White that had found its way into her head.

Half an hour into this test, she said, "There's little Loric."

She gave the faint suggestion of a nod toward a pitiful looking beggar boy with a tear-stained face and a mop of golden curls. He was wearing nothing more than dirty rags for clothes as he squatted outside of a winesink, holding a small bowl for collecting coins from those travelers taking pity on his condition.

"A man sees a little beggar boy," the captain told her quietly. "What makes a widow so certain this boy is an acolyte?"

"Not _just_ an acolyte. A specific acolyte. That's Loric!," she declared confidently. "Look at him bouncing on his heels. He couldn't sit still if his life depended on it. He's too eager, too energetic, too… _happy_ to be a beggar boy."

"Yes," the captain agreed. "A boy needs to work on his demeanor."

"Also, I think I recognize that bowl from breakfast. Umma will be wroth."

The captain snorted. As they continued on past Loric and his begging (breakfast) bowl, the widow knew that her task would now be much harder. Identifying a green apprentice was not so difficult, no matter whose face he might be wearing, but picking out a master in a crowd would be much trickier. It was by sheer luck that she spotted the first of the two masters, not fifteen minutes after she had correctly named Loric. Well, sheer luck _and_ her impressive memory. She found herself grateful she spent so much time studying and trying to recall details. It was just such a detail that struck her and allowed her to identify one of the Faceless Men.

"That lean fellow approaching the gangway to the _Merman's Fury,_ " the widow said softly as they neared the cog. She found herself wondering if that particular ship was bound for White Harbor. The name seemed to suggest it.

"What of him?" her companion asked.

"He's Faceless," she told him simply.

"And how does a widow know this man is a brother?"

"I recognize his sword," she replied. "Also, his tunic and jerkin."

"You recognize his…" her master's voice trailed off and he shook his head.

"I spend a lot of time in the storage vaults. And the armory," she shrugged. "That sword has a _very_ distinctive hilt."

They both gazed up at the man as he approached the deck of the _Merman's Fury_ and then boarded. Their eyes appraised the fine longsword at their brother's hip with its hilt wrapped in red leather and its pommel shaped like a silver skull. Though it was too far away to see from their position, the girl knew the skull boasted ruby eyes, adding to its sinister appearance. It was a thing of macabre beauty with a fine, sharp edge.

"A _very distinctive hilt_ ," Jaqen repeated, his tone incredulous.

"It's a lovely bit of work," the girl explained. "I've often admired it when in the armory."

He just stared at her.

"I spend a lot of time in the armory," she repeated defensively. "And I was folding _that tunic_ when you tried to slit my throat a few days ago. A girl's not like to forget _those_ details!"

"This exercise was to recognize false _faces_ , not _distinctive hilts_ ," her mentor grumbled at her.

"You said it was my task to identify two masters and an acolyte wandering around Ragman's Harbor," she countered. "You did _not_ say I was only allowed to use their faces to make my determinations."

"Just so," he conceded, "but a girl has merely identified _one_ master and an acolyte."

"But my dear captain, I'm holding the arm of the other master," she returned nonchalantly as her pace slowed to a stop and she placed her cool palm against his weathered seaman's cheek, tilting her veiled face up to look at his. Ever so delicately, she drew a whisper of a line underneath his right eye with her fingertips and continued, "And I know _this_ face is false because those eyes glowering at me belong to Jaqen H'ghar."

* * *

 

The widow requested her promised reward as they continued along the harbor in the direction of the Armorers district. The captain put her off with the protestation that the docks were no proper place for the story he had to tell. She would have to wait until they had reached an area where there were fewer prying eyes and interested ears around. This requirement piqued her curiosity.

"Where might this mystical place be?" she wondered aloud, her tone brazenly cheeky. "And can we go there _now?"_

The captain looked at her with Jaqen's eyes and in them she read his edict to mind her insolence, so she held her tongue, sensing that her master would not be moved on this matter.

As they neared the border of the Armorers District, her mind was drawn back to The Meerios Dinast Armory and the widow recalled the strange events from the previous day that had transpired inside, witnessed through a dirty window in an alleyway. She wondered if she might be able to pry any details about her master's business here out of him but did not want him to know she had followed him from Ragman's Harbor after she completed her assigned duty in the market the day before. She thought to ask, then thought the better of it, then finally gave in to the impulse, trying to disguise the intention behind her question with a sort of careless tone and words she hoped would be mistaken for the selfishness and presumption of a teenage girl.

"Jaqen," she began with a playful voice, "when you left Westeros, did you bring anything back for me?"

He snapped his head in her direction and appraised her sharply, causing her to wonder if the question had been a grave miscalculation, but then he replied without a hint of emotion, "That depends. Who are you?"

"No one," she answered automatically.

"Then no," he said dismissively, casting his eyes back on their path, "a man did not bring anything back for you."

She felt a little disappointed at his words but then she became even more curious about what was in his wooden case and what Meerios planned to do with it. She couldn't think of a way to ask about it without betraying her spying activities though, so she left it and instead began to question him about her new training regimen.

"Why did you suddenly decide I needed to learn to fight with two swords, and one of them a ridiculously large blade at that?"

"More _interesting_ questions," he remarked.

" _Jaqen_ ," she practically whined, "tell me!"

"That is not part of a man's tale."

"Still, I want to know."

He sighed, defeated by her annoying persistence.

"When a girl is sent abroad someday, she will need to know how to use western weapons should she ever find herself without that tiny little skewer she calls _Needle._ She must be ready to use whatever she may lay her hands upon."

Arya's heart caught in her throat. She had not believed that anyone knew she had kept Needle contrary to the Kindly Man's directive. She tried quickly to redirect the conversation.

"Sent abroad? Do you mean when I'm on a mission to deliver the gift in Westeros, like you?"

He breathed deeply and turned his bronze eyes upon her once again, his look unfathomable. After a few moments, he responded to her question.

"Yes, lovely girl. When you are sent to Westeros," he said, his tone hinting at regret.

They walked in silence, the widow thinking on her master's words; his seeming knowledge of her continued possession of Needle; his belief that she would need to master the large swords favored by western knights (even though she was certain she could dispatch them with any of the other weapons she had mastered—the list was quite long); his hint that she would likely be sent to Westeros to do the bidding of the Many-Faced god (did he mean _soon_?) She was absorbed in her contemplation of these matters as they passed Meerios' shop. That was when Jaqen's step slowed and then she felt herself nearly lifted off her feet as her master wrenched her arm and spun her around, forcing her into the alley from which she had surveilled him only one day prior.

He gripped her by her arms and skirted them both around the stacked crates that had served as the Cat's perch during her reconnaissance mission but now served only as the sunny spot for a napping black cat with a chewed ear. Her mind madly seized on the thought that it looked to be the same cat prancing upon the armory's table yesterday. The cat opened one sleepy eye to study the thing that had disturbed his nap, then lazily licked one paw and closed his eyes again. The girl felt the coarse stone of the shop's wall through her thin widow's raiment as Jaqen pushed her against it roughly. Her master glanced up at the row of dirty windows, then the stacked crates, and finally back at her covered face.

"A man's brother said that a girl smelled of the sea yesterday," he growled at her in a voice low and even but she saw his jaw muscles clenching.

"Jaqen, what are you…"

"A girl will be _silent,_ " he hissed, then repeated, "A man's brother said that a girl smelled of the _sea_ and a man knew that it must be a _mistake_ because a girl was at the market all morning yesterday, doing as she was bid. _Is that not so_?"

She looked at him and her mind scrambled to choose the appropriate action. What was she supposed to do? Was she meant to answer him honestly? Was she meant to use one of her daggers to force him to release her? Was she meant to come up with some convincing lie?

She tried casting doubt on his blooming suspicion.

"I'm not sure why you think that I would..."

He cut her off again with a look, his expression cold and brooking no argument as he leaned into her, pinning her to the wall with his iron grip, radiating a sort of enveloping menace. She knew Jaqen had killed many men and imagined that he must have been terrifying in those instances, at least to his victims. But the Cat had never once been frightened of her master.

Until now.

He pulled the shroud from over her face and said in a deceptively sweet voice, "How did your veil get so soiled, lovely girl?"

She tilted her head slightly up and over toward the wall, her eyes flickering past the stacked crates and their napping tenant, up to the familiar window with its small area of partially cleaned glass, an accusing circle of clarity amidst the smudged dirt, and then thought to herself, _A lie won't work. The dagger, then_.

As she met his eyes, she flexed her hand and then scraped her arm against the wall. In this way, she was just able to loosen the leather strap that held the small blade flat against her wrist and slip the cool steel into her hand. The widow had not gotten a proper grip before her master struck, quick as a viper, grasping her wrist and slamming the hand back hard against the wall twice, causing her to utter a curse. Her grasp weakened just enough so that he could snatch her blade away from her. He clutched both her dagger and wrist in his one hand, pressing her forearm flat against the stone wall as his other hand tightened its grip on her opposite arm. His eyes surveyed her small knife and he clicked him tongue at her in an annoying gesture such as one might use to chastise a naughty child.

"Come now, lovely girl," he said, his voice patronizing, "you would not really stab a man."

Her look said otherwise. He shrugged genially (as much as a man could shrug while restraining a Faceless Man-in-training) and looked back toward the window that had given her away.

"What was a Cat looking for on her perch?" he wondered.

"What was in the box, Jaqen?"

"Where does a girl keep her other blades? A man knows she carries no less than three."

A silent glare passed between them, neither answering the question that had been asked by the other. He shrugged again and then in one swift move, had spun her around so that her cheek met the warm stone of the wall and her chest was pressed hard against it as he pulled both of her wrists behind her back, pinning them in that uncomfortably bent position with one of his strong hands as the other hand began feeling along her leg through her skirt. She protested and cursed him but he said nothing and then his hand found the hard shape of a blade through her dress, strapped to her thigh. He bent over, pulling her arms back painfully as he pushed his elbow into her lower spine and then gripped the hem of her skirt to lift it, intent on removing the dagger. The widow's cheek was scraping the wall, her face pointed toward the crates, her mouth spewing curses at her master when she saw the napping cat suddenly rise and stretch his back. Their eyes met and then the widow closed hers. She could still see her master, sliding his hand along her leg, reaching for the dagger she had hidden under her skirts, and then there was a hiss and the cat leapt from his perch onto Jaqen's shoulder. The next few seconds were a chaotic rush of feline yowls, some scratching claws and a man grunting and cursing. Then the cat shot down the alley away from the scene and the widow's arms had been released by the captain as he growled in frustration and checked the wound on his neck for blood.

She turned around, leaning against the wall and panting while he leaned against the wall across the narrow alley, holding his hand to his neck, his look grim. Presently, she crossed the small space between them and stood in front of him, gently taking his hand and pulling it away from his wound.

"Let me see that," she said, inspecting the three linear scratches the screamed red on his neck. They were not so bad, just oozing a little blood, but were like to leave some scars. She removed the veil from her hair and bunched it up, dabbing gently at the wound. The captain looked over her head at the opposite wall, saying nothing. When she was satisfied that the wound had stopped bleeding, she replaced the veil in her hair and carefully lowered it over her face. She stepped away from him and he pushed off the wall and turned toward the canal as if to leave the alley, but then turned back to face her.

"A girl plays a dangerous game. A man does not think she understands what is at stake."

With that, he offered her his arm. Tentatively, she took it and the two walked out of the alleyway together as if nothing were amiss, following the cobblestone lane through the Armorers district.


	16. Chapter 16

The two servants of the Many-Faced god walked in silence through the Armorers district, arm-in-arm. They were so close that a widow's shoulder frequently brushed a captain's bicep, but they felt worlds apart. The widow's mind was sorting through the many enigmas she seemed to continually stumble upon while at the same time trying to ignore a gnawing sense of culpability for her master's slight wound.

_Don't be stupid_ , she thought to herself. _It's not your fault some cranky cat scratched him!_ She barely had time to complete the thought before a tiny voice from somewhere in the back of her head whispered to her accusingly.

_But isn't it?_

At the same time the widow's mind was warring with itself, the captain was becoming more and more convinced of the inevitability of that which he had tried so hard and so long to prevent. Though his false face was placid, he was filled with a sense of frustration that he was playing a game of _cyvasse_ while blindfolded, with a set of rules which he was only allowed to partially know. He had learned long ago to trust his gut though, and his gut said he still needed to save this girl, even if he wasn't completely sure how he would accomplish this feat. It would certainly help if his apprentice did not insist on charging headlong toward her own doom with that stubborn disregard for her security which infuriated him.

Almost as if she had plucked the thoughts from his head and read them, the Cat spoke hesitantly to her mentor from beneath her veil, saying quietly, "It's not that I _strive_ to be disobedient, master…"

Her words nearly stopped him in his tracks. She only ever called him "master" when she was truly contrite, which was _almost never_. The phrasing commanded his attention and he waited for her to elaborate.

"But there are _so many things_ I do not understand just now. It seems that thrice daily, some new strange thing is said or occurs or is asked of me, and I have this strong sense of… or rather, I feel that…"

The girl stumbled over her words as she struggled to explain her perception that she was hurtling through the darkness toward her destiny; a destiny she did not comprehend or choose; a destiny that felt unformed, nebulous, and even sinister. It was an ominous feeling that seemed to push and pull her in directions she did not intend to go but could not avoid. It was a feeling that chewed and scratched and demanded to be explored. It was a feeling that denied her peace and _prevented_ her unquestioning obedience despite her best intentions.

It was a feeling that hindered and frustrated her endeavor to become _no one._

Her master rescued her from her struggle to put all the she felt into words with his typical discernment, telling her gently, "A man knows."

_Of course he knows._

It was infuriating and the greatest relief, all at once.

She nodded at him, then asked, "How's your neck?"

The acolyte read the disdain in Jaqen’s false face, knowing it was stupid to ask a dangerous assassin if his _little scratches_ still hurt, but she wanted some reprieve from that tiny burning ember in her chest that she attributed to her guilt for all that had occurred; the whole bloody incident.

_Because it was her fault, somehow. Not just that she had followed him; not just that she had spied. Somehow she was responsible for what had happened; she had drawn his blood as surely as if she had attacked him with her dagger._

The Lorathi did not seem inclined to provide her with his pardon just then and he made her no answer. She supposed she would have to settle for the fact that he considered the wound too unworthy for even a few words. They continued walking the along lane that bordered the canal, her mentor gazing softly into the distance, seeing something she could not see and thinking thoughts she could not know.

"There is so little time, lovely girl," her master finally said to her, his voice grave and resigned.

"Yes, only a month," she responded in a hoarse whisper.

Jaqen sighed with a sound she might have taken for despair (if only it didn't cause panic to well up within her to think of _this_ man despairing of _anything_ ). He turned his molten bronze eyes to her, letting them trace the faint outline of her face through the gauzy material shielding it, telling her, "A girl should not be listening in on conversations in the courtyard like one of a eunuch's little birds. Not all things are meant for your ears, foolish child."

Through the veil, her cheeks burned. She hadn't thought before she'd spoken; hadn't intended for him to think her a _sneak_ and a _spy_ but twice now in the last half hour, she had painted herself as such.

"I didn't mean to eavesdrop," she muttered sullenly. "I was there first. You two surprised _me_."

"And did a man and his elder also force a girl to hide from their sight?"

She said nothing, nursing the feeling that this was all colossally unfair. She had been innocently trying to stretch her sore muscles in the courtyard when her masters had intruded upon _her_ seclusion, not the other way around. As for following Jaqen from Ragman's Harbor to the Armorers district, well, there was no dictate against such a thing. She had merely been curious. She was soon distracted from her sense of being unjustly persecuted however, when her mentor changed course and steered them over one of the bridges that crossed the Long Canal.

"Where are we going?" the widow inquired.

"A man finds he is hungry. It is near time for the midday meal," the captain replied.

"Well, you're going the wrong way if you expect Umma to feed you," the girl laughed.

"A man's duty does not permit him to return to the temple just yet."

"What duty?" the girl asked, sounding both confused and diverted.

"A duty to tell a grieving widow a tale of travels which she may find interesting."

A smile lit up her hidden face and the pair proceeded through the streets of Braavos toward the Moon Pool and its surrounding taverns and alehouses, where locals and travelers alike might find a meal of good quality. After a short while, they were seated in the common room of a reputable inn overlooking the Moon Pool, drinking watered wine and awaiting their food. Soon, a buxom tavern wench with a pleasant demeanor was setting platters of roasted chicken and carrots before them. The meat and vegetables were perfectly charred, sticky with honey and spiced with fennel and peppers. The smell was divine.

The widow was faced with the conundrum of eating with a veil covering her face, but as they were situated in the furthest corner of the dim chamber and she was seated with her back toward the half-full room, she chanced lifting the veil and placing its edge on top of her head, forming a sort of delicate hood. When her master said nothing, she began to eat her meal.

The wine, though weakened, was more than the girl was used to drinking. It emboldened her as the captain paused to slowly lick the honey from his fingertips, obviously savoring the sweet flavor. She leaned towards him across their narrow table and whispered once again one of the thousand questions that had been dancing in her head for a day.

"Jaqen, what was in the box you gave to Meerios?"

The captain did not stop sucking at the honey on his fingers even as his gaze rose from his plate to her exposed face. His eyes bore into hers and after a minute, with a voice calm and low, he answered her question with one of his own.

"Did a girl take her vows while a man was away and then forget to tell him?"

"What? _No…_ "

"Oh!" he emoted, "Well, then did a girl enter the order as a Faceless Man at some point in these last two weeks? A man has been so distracted with a girl's follies of late, it is possible he missed this detail."

"What are you talking…"

" _No one_ does not _need_ what is in that box," he interrupted before she could complete her sentence. " _No one_ does not need to _know_ what is in that box. It is not _no one's_ business to pry into these matters meant for her masters. This is not for a man to discuss with _no one_."

Humbled by his tone and his rebuke, the curious Cat sat back in her chair, feeling her cheeks burn as she stared down at her plate. She lifted a forkful of charred, honeyed carrots to her mouth and chewed them with a deliberate listlessness. Her master returned to his meal, but only momentarily. He breathed heavily, pushing back from the table and crossing his arms while giving her a hard stare.

She felt his eyes on her and looked up, swallowing her last bit of vegetables. The two prongs of the captain's Pentoshi beard pointed down at his half-eaten food and it was plain that he had something to say; something more important than finishing his chicken. When her master finally spoke, his words were not the ones the girl had expected.

"Do you trust a man?"

She wrinkled her brow at his ridiculous question. Did she trust him? Only with her life. Only with her future. Only with her dreams and purpose and path. Only enough to leave behind the only land she had ever known at a tender age and cross the Narrow Sea in hopes of finding him.

_Do you trust a man?_

_Only with my… everything._

Her momentary silence chafed him so he repeated his question but with a little more emphasis.

"Do you _trust_ a man, willful girl?"

Her thoughts fluttered back over the years, touching on all of her memories of the men in whom she had once placed her trust. To her father, with his unspoken but painfully evident love for her. To Jon, with his tender affection and admirable tolerance of her childish foibles. To Syrio, who had died for her; who had gifted her with his own belief that it mattered not whether she was a girl or a boy because she was worthy of teaching simply because she had the desire to learn. To the heartbreak of Gendry's abandonment. To her disappointment in Harwin, who she had believed would save her out of loyalty and reunite her with her mother and Robb. To two dead tormentors sacrificed to the Red god by the hand of a man who deemed himself beholden to a little mouse, making her into a fearful ghost of awesome power. To an iron coin, heavy in her small palm, both the key to her freedom and a priceless gift that she did not have any right to expect.

The girl met her master's watchful eyes and said, "I trust you more than I trust any man alive."

He nodded his head twice, accepting her words, inhaling deeply as if taking some sort of strength from them. His false face remained impassive but his eyes were out of place in that placid seafarer's visage. They showed no passivity at all, only a powerful sort of determination. Placing his elbow on their table, he brought his face to his fist, pressing his mouth and nose against the clenched fingers as he turned his eyes to her face, now pale as the weirwood door of their temple. He continued to study her as he unfolded his hand and placed a finger across his lips, thumb stroking his bearded chin pensively. She awaited his words in stillness; a stillness the Kindly Man would have surely praised.

"A time will come when a girl will be asked to do a certain thing," he finally said. "When this happens, a girl must obey."

She nodded slightly, understanding. And, _not_ understanding.

"A girl _must_ obey," Jaqen reiterated. "Whatever the thing is, she must do it."

His gaze was compelling and the warning it carried was stark and unassailable. He remained silent for a moment to allow his words to sink in.

" _Whatever the thing is,_ " he repeated, leaning toward her.

"I must do it," she confirmed.

"Just so."

She nodded again, this time more forcefully, intending to convey her comprehension and obedience. It was not enough for her master.

"A girl must promise. A girl must _swear_ to a man."

Jaqen had never before asked her for her oath. This unusual command startled her and the surprise she felt showed in her small frown. Her mentor was not deterred. He reached for her across the table, grasping her forearms tightly in his vise-like hands, holding her firmly and pinning her in place with his bronze eyes, the stare demanding her submission. A small part of her bristled at that, as she always had whenever being directed to do something that made her uncomfortable (or, in truth, whenever she was told to do _anything at all_ that was not first her own idea). But the intensity of his gaze and his words, his singular determination to have her comply with his urgent command, and his insistent want of her fealty bound her to his will despite her resistance.

"I swear, Jaqen. I will do my duty."

" _Whatever_ is asked," he prompted her.

"I will do my duty, whatever is asked."

Satisfied, he released her with both his hands and his eyes. He returned to his plate as if nothing extraordinary had just occurred. He chewed his chicken with vigor, making a sort of appreciative "hmmm" sound and smiled at her as he did. She gaped at him in astonishment. Her appetite was gone, taken by the burden of her unanswered questions, a long list which had just grown longer as she added, "What is this thing I must do without question?" to it. She pushed her plate away and Jaqen looked at the portion of her uneaten chicken, his eyebrows lifted. His question apparent, she sighed and waved her hand in a gesture of indifference.

"Go ahead," she said.

Grinning broadly, he stabbed the meat with his knife and moved it from her plate to his own. She shook her head and rolled her eyes in a gesture that conveyed both fondness and disapproval, then finished the last of her watered wine and called the giddy tavern wench over to bring her another cup. After her cup was refilled (and then emptied again) and after she tired of watching a grizzled captain chew, the widow crossed her arms over her chest and rested her bored gaze upon her companion's face.

"Is this place sufficiently free of interested ears and prying eyes and other pestering body parts?" she questioned.

Her master laughed, surveying the room. The tables nearest to theirs were all empty, but he still seemed reluctant to speak his tale in this place. He called over the tavern girl once more and spoke something in her ear. Her eyes widened and then a fit of giggles overtook her as she looked knowingly at the widow. _The girl’s look was too sly by half._ The Cat lowered the veil over her face once again and this seemed to inspire even more ridiculous tittering from the plump serving girl. The wench nodded to the captain, then departed.

The captain addressed the widow, saying, "A man hopes you do not mind that your reputation is now forever ruined. A girl may wish to choose other raiment when next she attends this part of town."

The Cat gave her master a bewildered look which turned to alarmed understanding when the tavern girl returned and Jaqen placed some coins in her palm in exchange for a key. He then led a seething widow up the back stairs of the inn, to a large and comfortable room with a bed, a table and chairs, and a fireplace that they had no need of.

"So I suppose now everyone down there thinks I'm a whore in widow's clothing?" she spat at him as soon as he closed the door behind them.

He shrugged nonchalantly, saying, "Perhaps, but there weren't very many people there to think it. Besides, a girl is not a whore, she is _no one._ "

She growled at him and flung herself into one of the chairs, ripping the veil from her hair and dropping it on the low table near her while kicking off the silly little slippers that completed her widow's disguise. They were too dainty to be a sensible choice for parading all around Braavos anyway, and her feet were feeling the impracticality of them deeply. She rubbed at her abused toes sullenly as her master dropped upon the soft bed, leaning back comfortably against the headboard, feather pillows piled behind him. She scowled at his easy and relaxed pose.

"What is it, lovely girl?" he asked, all innocence, his tone dripping with mock-concern. "Does a girl wish the share a man's bed?"

As he spoke those words, he patted the empty space beside him and inclined his head in invitation.

"Ugh!" she groaned with impatience. "Jaqen, I swear to the old gods and the new, if you don't get on with this story, I will take one of the daggers you didn't manage to commandeer from me and I will stab you through your arrogant bronze eye!"

"A man's eyes are bronze?" he questioned teasingly, grinning at her. "He had always just considered them brown. Imagine—it took a lovely girl to notice that they have been _bronze_ all this time."

A strangled cry sputtering from her lips, she pulled one side of her skirt up to her thigh with a violence she hadn't felt since she had tacked the rat-faced boy to the training room door many moons ago with her malevolent little knives. She wrenched her small dagger from the leather strap that held it against her leg but before it could fly from her hand, her master was in front of her, gripping her left wrist with one hand as he relieved her of her weapon with his other, chuckling all the while in his irritating way.

"Shhh, lovely girl," he soothed, his laughter still causing his voice to bounce and waver. "A man merely japes. An impetuous apprentice still needs time to learn how to rule her face, it seems."

He still held her at the wrist, immobilizing her arm, and gave her a meaningful look.

"What?" she demanded petulantly.

"A man will have the last of your blades before he begins his tale. He does not intend to be skewered mid-sentence if a girl does not like what he has to say."

She glowered at him, but slipped her fingers deftly into the high neckline of her bodice and pulled out the last of her small knives. Jaqen smirked at her and accepted it, then placed all three of her blades, the two he had just received and the one he had taken from her in the armory alley, on the small table on the far side of the bed. He then sat on the edge of the bed nearest his apprentice and leaned over his thighs, his hands on his knees, arms bracing his torso.

"Now," her master started suddenly, "where were we?"


	17. Chapter 17

"Daenerys and Aegon," the Cat prompted, her words a reminder to her master of where he had last left off in his telling.

_In the bath._

Her face colored a bit. He did not remark upon it, though.

"Yes," Jaqen concurred as she spoke the names. "The last Targaryens in the world. Interesting that they should both be in Dorne with their creatures. Interesting, but not surprising."

" _Their_ creatures?"

"A man assumes so. It seems inevitable, don't you agree?"

She thought about it for a minute, but could see no reason the two would not join their forces. They would likely even marry, joining one silver-haired dragon to another. That had been the Targaryen tradition since the first Aegon landed in Westeros and began burning his way across the land with his sisters.

"So, you saw a disturbing number of dragons concentrated in one area, likely plotting to reduce my homeland to ash," the Cat summarized, her bland tone belying the prick of worry she felt at the idea. _Sansa. Jon. Nymeria. They could all be reduced to ash as well._ "Then what?"

"Then a man then rode for the Reach, trying to pass through the land unnoticed so as not to be slowed."

"You were in a hurry to get somewhere?"

"A man was in haste to get _everywhere_ ," he corrected. "There was much to see, much to be accomplished, and much he was missing at home."

She thought about that, too. It seemed as if he was saying he was sent out by the order to _spy_. Or, perhaps, more than that—to do… _something_. But not to give the gift. Was there no contract that brought him to Westeros? Or, did he have a contract that simply coincided with the work his guild also required be done for their own purposes? And here, he had just implied he wanted to be done with his tasks and return to Braavos as quickly as possible. But why? To oversee her training? To serve on the council and take his rightful place in the governance of the Faceless Men? Or, was there something else? She was unsure, her thoughts tangling and spinning, but said nothing so that he would continue. Jaqen seemed surprised by her lack of comment and questioning but resumed his story after a brief pause.

"This journey was slower than the ride to Dorne had been. Many days and nights were spent on the open road, listening to the howls of the wolves in the night. Sometimes a man might find an inn with a room and a bit of food for coin, though none as good as what a girl just ate downstairs. It is a hard time in the west just now. Autumn has waned and the beginnings of true winter are apparent, even as far south as the Riverlands."

"So you rode for the Riverlands?" the Cat prodded, her memories pricking painfully at the edge of her concentration as her master spoke of her mother's girlhood home.

"Yes, the Riverlands. There is a certain woman of great power, a dwarf in truth, who lives in that land, and a man had to speak with her."

"Why?"

"She possessed…" he began, carefully considering his words, then continued, "…certain information important to the order."

"The ghost of High Heart," Arya guessed in a whisper.

Jaqen looked at her strangely then stood and began pacing the length of the room, back and forth. He seemed to be considering his next words carefully.

"Are you trying to decide what you should tell me?" the girl asked him, drawing him out of his thoughts. She knew that the ghost often said strange things that might be considered… _disturbing_.

He stopped in place, arms folded, head turned down as if considering the wear on his boots. His next words came without any change in his position. He spoke without looking at her.

"A man is trying to decide what is safe for a girl to know."

She stiffened, sitting up straighter in her seat, feeling that uncomfortable tingle along her spine that came whenever she sensed danger.

"Who do I have to fear, Jaqen? Does the Kindly Man not want me to know what you were doing in Westeros? Are you risking the ire of the order by telling me these things?" she speculated. "Or are there people in King's Landing or at Casterly Rock or in the Iron Islands who are intent on wiping out my line? Do you think someone is coming after me _here_? _Who_ is the danger to me?"

After each of her questions, he shook his head to indicate that she had not correctly understood his worry. When she asked who the danger to her was, he sighed deeply and lifted his head, taking his eyes from the floor and resting them on her tense face.

"You are, lovely girl."

This was not the revelation she was expecting. She drew back, frowning, and then turned her head to the side, trying to interpret her master's meaning. It suddenly struck her that the answer was simple. Jaqen was hesitant to tell her things he thought she might react to by demanding to be freed from her obligations so that she could pursue her revenge in Westeros. She supposed it was a valid concern, but if she hadn't stowed away on a ship bound for Maidenpool by now, she was doubtful anything her master could say about his travels abroad would inspire such an impetuous action.

"You can tell me anything," the Cat assured him. "I promise I won't run away in the night."

His look was grave but he gave her a half-smirk, saying, "A girl gets better and better at reading a man. So, since a man no longer has to worry about a girl trying to swim to Westeros clenching Needle between her teeth or stealing the face of a cabin boy to try to gain work on a ship, earning her way across the narrow sea, the story may continue, yes?"

_Steal the face of a cabin boy in order to gain passage on a ship bound for Westeros, using her labor as fare?_

She was embarrassed that she had never thought of it. But then, there was little left for her across the sea anymore. Her home and her purpose were now in Braavos, among the brothers and masters and elders of the House of Black and White. At least, she was trying very hard to convince herself that this was the case. However, her master's hesitancy to tell her something for _fear_ it could cause her to flee to Westeros had piqued her interest. She couldn't imagine anything, short of learning that a red priest had somehow brought her father back to life, that would inspire her to run away to the place that had once been her home; the place that had been the stage for every heartbreak in her life; the place that had been witness to nearly every painful thing she had ever experienced.

There was nothing that could draw her back across the sea now.

_Nymeria_ , said that little voice in the back of her head. _Sansa. Jon. Gendry_. And _Ser Gregor, Dunsen, Raff the Sweetling, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei._

She gave no indication of her troubled thoughts and nodded to her master, indicating that he could continue with his account of his travels. Jaqen resumed his pacing, starting and stopping his words several times.

"This dwarf is… she is a very _unusual_ … she said the most interesting… well, she told a man…"

The Cat realized that her mentor was not aware that she had actually met the ghost during her life in Westeros. He was trying to explain the strange little dwarf woman and failing because he did not grow up with tales of the children of the forest and greenseers and direwolves. Here in Essos, the children likely heard tales of warlocks and shadowbinders and, more recently, dragons as they grew up. He had no point of reference for this extraordinary prophesier. She found herself thinking that he could have benefitted from the Lorathi version of Old Nan when he was a boy.

Her mind was suddenly filled with wondering about Jaqen as a boy. A slight snicker escaped her as she pictured him in the temple, a green acolyte, training with his master, being swatted repeatedly with a blunted blade as he learned how to _dance_. The sound of her mirth caused him to look at her curiously. She had no wish to reveal her thoughts, so she deflected his interest by asking a question.

_"_ Did the ghost ask you for a kiss?"

Again, he gave her that strange look.

"How does a girl know what the ghost said to a man?"

"She always asks the handsome men to kiss her," the Cat replied simply.

"The face the man wore was not so handsome. It was that of a plain Dornishman, even slightly pock-marked."

The girl reflected on this for a moment and then told him, "She has a way of… seeing the _truth_ of things. I doubt your false face fooled her."

"Just so," Jaqen agreed. "A man offered gold for her words, but all the woods witch wanted was a kiss to tell all she knew."

Here he paused. She waited for him to continue but then a thought struck her and her snickering returned as she was overwhelmed with amusement.

"Oh, Jaqen, you didn't actually _do_ it, did you?"

His face was as passive as hers was delighted. Her eyes grew wide at his lack of denial and she slapped one hand over her mouth as if to contain her merriment, but failed as she convulsed momentarily with a fit of ridiculous giggling.

"That's just something she _says_ ," she laughed, finding it difficult to breathe. "I've seen her reveal everything for a song!"

"A girl knows this woods witch?" her mentor asked, sounding astonished. "You have actually seen her? _Spoken_ with her?"

"Yes. I'm sorry, was that not obvious?" she asked with a tone of amusement, biting back her laughter. "I saw her twice, though she only spoke to me once. How else would I know about the kiss?"

He ignored her question and said, "A man would know what she said to you."

"I'm more interested in what she said to _you_ ," the girl countered. " _Especially_ at such a price!"

He gave her a hard look, but she was enjoying the feeling of having something with which to torment her master, especially after his various antics over the past few days, and did not let up.

"So, you kissed her, just because she said to? If she'd told you to unlace your breeches and pull out your…"

"Mind your tongue, insolent girl! A man paid the woods witch the reverence she was due as one so ancient and powerful. Her memory goes back to the time of the first men."

"It sounds like she added some very interesting memories to her collection during your visit," the Cat chuckled.

Her master was not amused. He crossed the space between them swiftly, appearing before her so quickly that she barely had time to react, though she instinctively reached for the wrist blade she no longer possessed. He grasped her chin in his hand and forced her face up so that he was probing her winter grey eyes with a penetrating look that hinted at the savagery of which he was capable.

"There are things a girl must know," he intoned slowly, his sultry purr belying the violence in his bronze eyes. "Things which are _important_."

He pulled his hand away from her face, dropping it to hook his thumb in his sword belt. The smile faded from her lips and her laughter died as she cast her eyes toward the floor in contrition. She scolded herself for childishness then looked at her master's false face and true eyes, nodding her acknowledgement of his authority in this matter.

"A man would know what this witch said to you," he repeated and the girl supposed she could express her penitence by telling her own tale.

"She said a great many things," the Cat began, "but what she said to _me_ was that I was a blood child and smelled of death. She told me that I was cruel to come to her hill and that I had a dark heart. She wanted no part of me. She told me to go away."

"Is that all?"

The girl's face became lined with concentration as she recalled that moment in her past; Lord Beric, defending his highborn captive in his gentle way; Lem, with his soiled cloak once bright enough for a Bravo to wear, nursing both a broken nose and some resentment against her. The ghost, telling them that travelling to Riverrun was an error, for her mother would be elsewhere.

"No," the girl said softly, her look pensive. "No, that was not all. Well, yes, it was all she said to _me_ , but to Lord Beric, she said my mother had quit Riverrun and would be found at the Twins. She said that there was to be a wedding…"

Her voice drifted off and she felt an odd sensation crawling up her neck, causing a painful tightness in the back of her throat. Her nose burned, her eyes twitched, and she pinched her mouth tightly, biting her bottom lip until she tasted blood. She had not thought of it in all these years; had never replayed that scene in her head with the hindsight she now possessed. _The ghost knew her mother and brother would be slaughtered. The dwarf had seen it._ Clenching her fists tightly, nails digging into her palms in a vain attempt to rule her face, she drowned in the sudden realization that she had been so close to the discovery of the awful truth, before it _was_ truth, but her chance to affect the future and save her family had been snatched away. The ghost knew about the Red Wedding, before there _was_ a Red Wedding, and had not warned her. Had she known…

Jaqen watched her with alarm as her face blanched white and a muffled sound escaped her nose and mouth. Her lips parted and the blood on them contrasted with her white face as starkly as the red stained tears of the weirwood trees in all the godswoods of the world contrasted with their white bark. Her eyes turned to grey ash and she whispered two words with a voice so full of anguish, that it was nearly as hard for him bear it as it was for her.

"She _knew._ "

Her hands flew to her face, covering her nose and mouth, attempting to tamp down the grief that strained to burst forth from deep within her. A single tear escaped her vigilant guard, tracing its languid path down her pale cheek. Her face, so devoid of color that she more closely resembled the marble likeness of her Aunt Lyanna that stood watch over her tomb than the live girl herself, became immobile, frozen in a masque of desolation and wretchedness.

Her master interpreted her words and her posture immediately, reading the torment and guilt that were marring her features, encumbering her, choking her with an icy grip and threatening to send her into madness. He pulled her to her feet and crushed her thin frame against his own, wrapping his arms protectively around her, enveloping her in ginger and cloves and the clean smell of leather. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, letting the scent of the leather call back other memories which were less harrowing.

"What could a tiny wisp of a girl have done? What could a captive child with no training, no weapon, and nothing but fierce loyalty and love for her family have done against the thousands of men at the Twins?" her mentor murmured soothingly as her hands clenched at his leather jerkin.

She felt Jaqen's arms tighten around her and his chin rest lightly against the top of her head, heard his consoling sounds meant to calm her, and recalled her father's embrace and the strong arms of her older brothers, especially Jon. When they had held her to comfort her after some small childhood hurt, it gave her a feeling of safety; of being secure and safeguarded, even cherished. She felt the same contentment now, in Jaqen's arms. His unyielding embrace eased her fears and guilt and settled deep into her bones. Jaqen pressed his lips into her hair, kissing the top of her head gently as he spoke soft words of comfort in his native tongue.

“My sweet girl, my sweet, sweet girl,” he was whispering over and over, “do not grieve.”

The tension in her muscles, the knot in her stomach, and the prickle of her spine all eased, smoothed and settled by her master’s touch and his voice murmuring in Lorathi. And then she grimaced.

Because it was a lie.

No man's arms could protect her. Valyrian steel was not required to remove a man from this world and relieve him of his vow to shield those for whom he cared. Sinew and bone were cleaved as easily as Umma's lamprey pie, even with the weakest of blades. No gesture, no protective arms, no noble intentions translated to immunity from pain and death and the evil intentions of men. Her father, in all his greatness, had failed to prevent her from witnessing every horror that men were capable of perpetrating, starting with his own violent death. Her brother Robb, despite his elevation to the highest seat of power as had ever existed in the North, could not save himself, much less her. And _Jon_ ; Sweet Jon, the bastard brother who indulged her and understood her and loved her more than any true born brother ever could; Jon who rose to the most revered position he could ever hope to attain, _Lord Commander_ of the Night's Watch, could offer her no defense from peril while sitting atop his icy seat on the wall, despite all the love he might feel for her.

She breathed deeply, steadying herself, and pushed away from her master's chest, leaving one palm resting over his heart, feeling its steady drum beat signal the immediacy of life even as she considered the sovereignty of death. She used her other hand to scrub away all evidence of her single, traitorous tear and gave Jaqen a sad smile.

"A girl would know what the ghost said to her master," she said weakly, mimicking his pattern of speech to show she was capable of jesting, even now.

He peered at her face, now composed, and weighed her strength. His false face was as placid as ever but she read the concern in his eyes. She knew he was wondering if telling this part of his tale was a mistake, but it was too late now. She tried to reassure him.

"How much worse could it be, Jaqen? Nearly everyone I loved has been murdered, I have almost no family left and those who remain are still lost to me. You don't have to protect me. _Tell me_ ," she urged. "What did the ghost of High Heart say to you?"

"Much and more," was his considered answer and then he refused to say anything else until he had called down for wine to settle her. The same buxom tavern wench delivered a pale Pentoshi amber in an open carafe with two goblets and a loaf of fresh bread, her eyes widening in surprise to see the undisturbed bed and the widow slumped in a chair with her veil covering her face.

"Oh!" she exclaimed as she laid the fare on the table next to the widow, but said nothing more as the captain slipped her a coin and sent her on her way. Once the door had shut behind her, the widow removed her veil once again and dropped it on the other side of the just-delivered tray.

Jaqen poured her a cup of wine and placed it in her hands. She began to protest that she was fine and that she didn't usually drink much wine anyway, but he obstinately refused to hear her and said he would not continue his story until she had drunk it. So, she did. And when she felt the warmth of the liquid reach her toes, she curled them and uncurled them a few times, smiling, then reached for the crusty loaf and tore off a heel, chewing a piece as she looked back at her mentor, indicating that he should continue.

"A man approached High Heart under the dark of night," he started. "Wolves howled at the full moon but they sounded far away."

By his description of the moon, she reasoned that it had taken him a good while to reach High Heart, but she did not interrupt him to verify her conclusion. He described how the moon shone so brightly that it was almost as if he had a torch in his hand to aid him in finding the path to the circle of weirwood stumps. There, at their center, he found the dwarf who was a woods witch, the one called the ghost of High Heart, and she turned to him and said that she had been waiting for him.

_The tiny woman had a voice that crackled like old parchment when she spoke. Her eyes were red and her hair was long and white and twisted, nearly brushing the ground. She radiated a power that he could sense as he stepped into the circle of bone-white stumps and greeted her by dropping to one knee and bowing his head. She had laughed at that, telling him she was no queen to be exalted or god to be worshipped and bade him rise._

_"A man has come to…" he began but she cut him off with her scratchy voice, waving two raised fingers in front of his face._

_"I know why you have come, assassin."_

_He was surprised by her words, astounded that she had seen through his facelessness, but he said nothing. She asked him what he intended to offer her in exchange for what he wanted and he said he was prepared to give her any sum of gold she required. She laughed again._

_"I have no use for gold nor silver nor coppers, but I will tell you what you wish to know for a kiss."_

_Without hesitation, he took her hand and pressed the Dornishman's lips to the thin flesh stretched over the dwarf's knuckles in a sign of reverence for her age and wisdom and power. She seemed touched by his gesture and placed her hand on his face as his head remained bowed, kissing her hand._

_"Sweet boy," she said sadly, causing him to look up at her with mild amusement._

_"A man has not been a boy, sweet or otherwise, in some time."_

_"When you have walked this land and witnessed a thousand thousand sunsets, all men are boys."_

_"Please," he whispered, "tell the thing a man must know."_

_"Kiss my mouth, boy," she countered, "and all will be revealed."_

_Stooping over to reach the wizened woman's upturned face, he pressed his lips to hers in a chaste kiss, closing his eyes and feeling his body shudder with her power. She pulled away from him as if he had burnt her with his touch and gasped, rubbing the feeling of him from her flesh frantically with the back of her hand._

_"I know your taste, Lorathi!" she cried._

_"A man is Dornish," he corrected her, stepping away from her wringing hands._

_She gave him a displeased look and waved her hand toward his face twice in a sort of gesture of dismissal, erasing all traces of the Dornishman and returning him to his own Lorathi countenance. Startled, he placed his hands on his face, feeling his features and then stumbled backwards, coming to rest heavily on one of the weirwood stumps surrounding them._

_"I taste death on you," she told him, "but more death than you have dealt. It is another's guilt there, the one whose lips you savor, and it is familiar to me."_

_He gave her a confused look and she shrugged, explaining, "The one you kiss. The one you have kissed. The one you_ will _kiss. Past. Present. Future. In my dreams, they are no different."_

_"You know what a man seeks," he probed, brushing off her strange words._

_"Yes, and I know why you seek it," she replied and then gave him a shrewd look, continuing, "although I do not think that_ you _know why you seek it."_

_He was about to protest but decided it wasn't important to correct this woman's perceptions, only to do his duty and find the answers he needed to continue his quest._

_The witch walked closer to him, standing before him and speaking in her dry, crackling voice, sounding very much as if she needed to wet her throat. She told him as much and he walked to his horse to retrieve a skin of wine from his saddlebag and handed it to her. He remained standing, wishing for her to feel his presence and understand his seriousness of purpose._

_"Oh, sit down, Lorathi," she scolded with impatience. "You'll no more harm me than you would_ her _. Besides, I was just about to tell you of my dream."_

_He said nothing but sat once again on the weirwood stump nearest him and waited patiently for her to finish his wine. When she did, she complemented its quality._

_"A man picked it up in the Reach," he told her. "Now, what do you have to tell?"_

_"I dreamed of a monstrous creature, death walking with six legs, who eats the warm hearts of men and drinks their blood; who poisons their fruits and carves holes in their chests with cold steel; who can deal death as easily in dreams as in wakefulness. The creature was born of honor and nobility but became the daughter of corpses. Her father now peers over the great city with eyes that do not see and her mother was reborn an unnatural thing cloaked in grey, consumed by hatred."_

_He sat up straighter, trying to unravel her meaning, feeling a sense of foreboding as she continued her description of her dream._

_"The lady and her daughter share their unbending resolve for revenge, the lady cherishing it as the only feeling contained within her stony heart, and the monstrous creature knowing its fire as the only light within her own darkened heart. They sup at separate tables but their meals are the same. Vengeance is their bread and retribution is their wine."_

_"Why are you telling these things?" he asked the ghost. "You know what a man seeks."_

_"Yes," she agreed. "And what you seek resides with the mother."_

_"How is that possible? She… she was not buried. How will a man find this thing? Should he dredge the river in hopes of capturing it?"_

_"She was not buried, aye," crackled the papery voice, "but walks still. And she has your precious artifact."_

_Jaqen placed his hand on either side of him, gripping the stump and leaning forward toward the woods witch, and asking in a slow, deliberate voice so as not to be misunderstood, "Are you saying that Catelyn Stark is still alive?"_

_"Yes, my boy, and no. Catelyn Stark is no more—you seek Lady Stoneheart."_

Here, her mentor stopped his tale, watching as Arya leapt to her feet at his words, swaying slightly from the effects of the wine, mind swimming, trying to find the words to ask… to say what she thought… hoped but did not dare believe…

"Lady Stoneheart?" was all she managed to rasp out, clutching at her master's arm.

He grasped her hands in his and looked sadly at her face, speaking in a near whisper as he said, "Yes, sweet child. Lady Stoneheart is your mother."


	18. Chapter 18

Arya sat for a long time in silence, staring across the room, her eyes seeing a succession of images rather than the rough planks of the door bolted shut. It was her mother that she saw most often; her mother as she _had_ been: alive, fierce yet gentle, and beautiful; her mother smiling at her Lord husband and her charming eldest children, Robb and Sansa, whenever they showed some evidence of their accomplishments; her mother frowning with both exasperation and a touch of worried fondness at her youngest girl when she would straggle in from the godswood, wet and dirty, ruined dress dripping or torn, with her fuzzy direwolf pup in tow, padding muddy paw prints across the rush-covered stone floors of the great hall. She saw the ghost of High Heart, too, her red eyes full of ancient wisdom. She heard the wizened dwarf's words clattering in her ears, bouncing off of each other, at first making no sense but then making more sense than they had when she first spied the witch speaking to Lem and Tom and then Lord Beric and Thoros; hearing, too, what Jaqen had been told and had related to his apprentice only moments before.

_I dreamt of a roaring river and a woman that was a fish. Dead she drifted, with red tears on her cheeks, but when her eyes did open…_

_If it's the mother you want, seek her at the Twins. For there's to be a wedding._

_She was not buried, aye, but walks still. Catelyn Stark is no more—you seek Lady Stoneheart._

What would her mother be like, now? And did she know that Arya was even alive? Had she finally been reunited with Sansa? Where was she now? And what did the ghost mean by saying her mother was an unnatural thing, cloaked in grey? How had this dark miracle come to pass? There was a precedent for resurrecting those who had been killed. Arya had seen Thoros, the red priest of Myr, perform just such a feat when the Hound killed Lord Beric during his trial by combat, but who had saved her mother?

The little voice she sometimes heard in a far corner of her mind, quiet but insistent, spoke once again, telling her, _These questions are not important. She's your mother. You have to go to her._

She pushed the thought away. She couldn't decide that now. They had been too long separated, and there were other matters to consider. Her training and her future among the Faceless Men, for instance. Could she sacrifice all that to run to Westeros in search of her mother? A mother who was an _unnatural creature?_ There were so many unanswered questions and many things she had to sort through. There were too many mysteries that needed solving to just pick this _one_ and abandon all for it alone, on a whim.

_But she's your mother_ , the voice persisted.

"She's my mother," the girl repeated in a whisper, nodding slowly, not even realizing she had spoken aloud.

Her master, who had been leaning against the wall in one corner of the room and watching her closely, nodded his agreement, his slight head bob mirroring her own, but furrowed his brow at her words.

"Yes, lovely girl, she is your mother. And also, _not_ your mother."

The girl looked at him with wide, slate eyes, considering his words, and then rose to pace as he had earlier. One arm she pressed against her side, forearm crossing her belly with her fist pushing firmly into her gut as if holding herself together. With the other hand, she gripped her neck in a gesture that usually indicated a difficulty of breathing or some significant distress. She moved noiselessly back and forth across the room and soon began to mutter, the fingers at her neck kneading her own skin unconsciously.

"I saw Lord Beric. He was still… the same," she uttered in a bare whisper, urgency coloring her words. "He was no _creature_. He was alright. Thoros brought him back, over and over, and _he_ was alright. He was still kind and... just. He was still _good_."

Her mentor left his place in the corner and approached her slowly, intercepting her as she turned to pace once again across the floor. He gripped her shoulders and she dropped her arms and looked up at him, caught between a feeling of helplessness and a pull toward action. She wanted to _do_ , but felt there was nothing she _could_ do. Her eyes sent a silent plea to her master, asking for guidance.

"There is more," he murmured, his gaze intense. "So much more."

"More?" she asked in disbelief. "Jaqen, you've told me that there are dragons in Dorne, plotting who knows what, and that you met with a woods witch who told you all sorts of… _awful_ things about my mother and I assume the rest of those terrible observations were about _me_ , and then that my mother, who I have believed dead for _years,_ is actually alive. What more could there be?"

He moved his warm hands from her arms to her cheeks, trapping her face so that he could stare into her eyes and make her understand that there was more she needed to know.

"There is _so much more,_ " he told her and his look was one of... _regret?_

She shut her eyes, blocking out his probing bronze gaze and felt his fingers slide over her jaw and down to her neck. His hands fit easily around its circumference and his thumbs came to rest in the hollow of her throat with a gentle pressure. She leaned into it and blew out one long breath.

"There is more _I_ need to know?" she queried with a shaky sigh. Her master nodded his confirmation, pulling his hands from her throat, causing her to feel a sudden chill as she lost his warmth. He turned toward the small table and poured her another cup of wine, then pressed it into her hands. She smiled wanly and took a sip as he suggested she sit. Her pacing had brought her nearest to the bed, so she drifted down and sat upon the edge of the soft mattress as her master had done earlier. Jaqen grabbed one of the chairs and pulled it closer to her so that he could sit facing her while he continued his story. As he took his seat, their knees nearly touched. She took another sip of her wine and then looked at him expectantly.

"A man left High Heart for Oldstones," he began again.

"Why Oldstones?"

"The ghost had told a man that Lady Stoneheart and her band had been there recently. A man hoped to discover them and speak with the lady."

"Her _band?_ " the girl asked, confused. _Her mother had a band?_

"Well, a brotherhood, if you prefer."

" _The Brotherhood without Banners?_ " she cried, hardly believing it could be true. Everything crashed into place all at once. The Brotherhood must have found her mother! Perhaps they were nearby when she was murdered and tossed into the river. They must have seen the atrocity and saved her, pulling her from the water and delivering her to Thoros! She ignored the niggling feeling in her head that told her this was not how it happened. A half-forgotten dream tried to emerge but she tamped it down, for it made her hope weaken and she did not like the feeling that crept into her belly then; did not want to remember what wolf-eyes had seen. She tried to lie to herself so that she might hold onto her hope, for there had been little enough of it in her life and she was loathe to let it seep away.

_Thoros himself might have even been the one to rescue her from the water_ , the girl told herself. Arya had seen the power at the outlaw priest’s command. It all made sense now! Thoros had called upon his Red god and had been given an answer in the form of her mother rising. Just like Lord Beric, her mother was gifted with a renewal of life because she had been a noble woman and had a just purpose! _And_ a Red priest nearby. And _of course_ her mother had joined them. With Robb dead, she would want to do whatever she could to avenge him and to serve the god that had given her life once again. Her mother had always been so wise, she surely served as an advisor, providing counsel for Lord Beric and his men!

"Yes, lovely girl, that is what they called themselves," the Lorathi answered calmly, not seeming to understand her frenzy.

"But Jaqen, the _Brotherhood…_ Those were Lord Beric's men!"

Though she had not discussed her time with the Brotherhood in any detail with her master, he was aware that after she parted with him inside of Harrenhal and before she managed to find a Braavosi captain to ferry her across the sea to the House of Black and White, she had spent some time as Lord Beric's hostage.

"There was no Lord Beric among them," he replied doubtfully. "Though many of them did seem to know a highborn girl named Arya Stark."

"But this is wonderful!" she exclaimed, nearly spilling her wine in her excitement. "The Brotherhood without Banners had among them a Red priest, very gifted. I saw him bring Lord Beric back from a wound that ought to have ended him.! No, that _did_ end him. And it wasn't the first time, either! If Thoros resurrected my mother, then…"

He shook his head, stopping her excited rambling.

"What is it?" she demanded.

"A man named Thoros was among this band but he did _not_ resurrect a girl's mother."

"I don't understand," she said flatly. "The ghost said my mother still walked."

"And so she does, yes," her master agreed, "but it is not by any work of the Red priest, at least not directly. There was talk of a knight who kissed your mother's corpse at the beseeching of a Northman, passing his unnatural life to her. This knight must be your Lord Beric."

"Passing his life to her? Do you mean that Lord Beric is gone?"

"Just so."

She mulled that over for a moment, but did not spare much time in sadness for Dondarrion. He had been given more life than was his due and he had taken her as a hostage, no matter how well treated she was during her time with his men.

"So, you saw my mother. And the Brotherhood? You found them at Oldstones?"

"A man ran across a small pocket of their band and explained his quest. They were kind enough to take a man to their lady who now leads in your Lord Beric's stead."

"My mother is the _leader_ of the Brotherhood?"

He nodded and continued his account, relaying how he went seeking the brotherhood and their lady, and finally met a small band of them roaming the countryside near Oldstones. He explained that he had business with Stoneheart but would not say what it was. Naturally, they were suspicious—having many enemies who would love to kill their leader and disband the troublesome brotherhood. He allowed them to take him. They disarmed him and placed a thick hood over his head as they led him to a cave where the lady judged her captives.

_"She almost never lets anyone live," a big man the others called Lem said, "but don't be nervous. You look a decent fellow. You might have a chance."_

_The Faceless Man said nothing. He felt nothing but the anticipation of completing this particular part of his mission. There was no fear. There was no doubt in him, although, if he allowed himself to admit it, there might have been a touch of curiosity; curiosity to see a girl's mother, such as she was. For as open as his apprentice could sometimes be with him, her mentor and master, there were still parts of her she did not allow him to know and parts he had been unable to reach. She had buried those parts deep within herself. He was unsure if she meant to hide them from the Faceless Men so that they could not be bled out of her (a problem, really, since she could not be herself and be no one at the same time), or if she meant to hide them from herself, too afraid or too hurt to acknowledge their existence. There were parts of her life that were lost to her, whose absence caused a pain she still felt so deeply; her brothers, her sister, her parents, her wolf, and an entire life that started out to be one thing and then become something else entirely._

_He was led through a narrow passage with the hood still in place. Suddenly, he sensed that he had entered an open space and that he shared it with several others. Despite the hood already effectively blinding him, he closed his eyes in order to concentrate; to feel the room with every nerve, engaging all of his senses available to him. Five… no, six men. And a lady standing at their head, facing him. He slowly breathed in and out, feeling the naked steel around him; smelling it; hearing it. They feared him, then. Good._

_The hood was removed and he remained standing as calm as still water, eyes closed, knowing that opening them would bring that intense burst of pain which comes with a sudden flash of light after prolonged darkness. When he felt himself adjusting through his lids, he opened them and glanced quickly around. He congratulated himself on his count, but then stopped. Not six men and a woman. Five men and two women. There was the one cloaked in grey, whom he had been told to expect, and there was another; golden, with an uncommon build, that of a knight in truth, and she was arrayed as one as well. She boasted startling blue eyes, apparent even in the dim cave, which studied him suspiciously, a deep furrow forming between them. Her steel remained sheathed but her large hand rested upon her hilt, beneath a remarkable golden pommel, shaped like a lion's head with two glittering rubies for eyes. Next to her stood a man whose face he knew, though the hard, golden hand showing from beneath the sleeve of his chain mail was not familiar. How strange. In his left hand, he gripped his sword. His face was arranged in a boyishly careless expression but there was a menace apparent in the way he held his blade._

_On the other side of the golden haired woman stood the one who had led him in, the man called Lem. The rest were strangers to him though he knew the name of the cloaked lady who stood above him, perched upon a flat stone, a sort of pedestal, her face hidden in the shadows thrown by her hood and the torches that burned bright behind her._

_"Lady Stoneheart," the assassin greeted with a courtly bow. "A man has been seeking you. We have much to discuss."_

_A bearded man with greasy, tangled hair brushing his shoulders, unarmed but for a dagger at his hip, approached the lady as she raised her hand to her throat, almost as if she were choking. Jaqen watched curiously as the lady rasped from beneath her hood and her attendant cocked his ear toward her, seeming to concentrate on the quiet scratching sounds she made. He then looked toward the newcomer and spoke._

_"Our Lady has a bit of trouble with her speech now," he explained, "Thanks to the tender care given her by Walder Frey and his gracious family. Those Freys, you gotta admire their loose interpretation of the sacred law of guest right, eh? You'll have to forgive me for this unusual arrangement. I translate for her. She says she doesn't know you and you don't look like a friend. Why shouldn't we string you up right now?"_

_"A man is no Frey, no Lannister, and no Bolton. What dispute have you with an innocent traveler when you count a Lannister among your numbers?"_

_"A man is no Frey, aye, and no Westerosi either. What is a foreigner doing all the way in the Riverlands, seeking our Lady?" called Lem from Jaqen's right, his sword clutched dangerously in his hand. He was wearing a soiled yellow cloak so tattered that Jaqen found himself wondering why he bothered._

_"A man has said," the assassin replied coolly. "There is much to discuss with your lady."_

_"My Lady," spoke the other woman in the chamber, her tone clear and her voice strong, "I don't trust him. He looks… dishonest."_

_There were several murmurs of agreement around the cave, echoing off the rock walls so that it sounded like a chorus of voices from a larger crowd. He allowed the sound to die down and then turned his attention back toward the shadowed face of the cloaked woman._

_"Lady Stoneheart, you will want to hear what a man has to say. It concerns your daughter."_

_There was a brief, intense silence, almost a collective intake of breath, and then suddenly, everyone was talking at once. There were clipped exclamations pouring forth, one atop the other, difficult to distinguish as each of the witnesses shouted different iterations of, "Lady Sansa" and "The Vale" and "we tried to find" and "he's lying, Littlefinger has" and so forth. After a minute of this, the lady raised her hand to quiet the group. The silence that fell was immediate and complete. She placed both of her hands tightly around her throat and forced the air up from her lungs, her raspy, faint voice difficult to understand but she was vehement in her desire to be heard._

_"What… do you… know… of my… daughter… Sansa?" she demanded._

_He drew in a deep breath and allowed it to escape before speaking. Gazing into the darkness of her hood, barely able to make out the outline of her pale face, he said, "My Lady, of your daughter Sansa, a man knows nothing…"_

_Before he could continue, the room was in an uproar with shouts of "I told you he's a liar" and "I said not to trust him" and "hang him now!" Each of the tattered knights nearly vibrated with frustration and anger and fear. All present in the chamber seemed beside themselves except for himself and the grey lady before him. They stood still as stones, facing one another, as the echoing din diminished around them. When silence descended upon them once more, the Lorathi spoke._

_"It is your daughter Arya a man has come to discuss."_

* * *

 

Jaqen paused in his telling, conscious of the girl's reaction to the news that he had told Lady Stoneheart that he wished to discuss her younger daughter. The widow swallowed hard and then slumped a little, pressing her hand to her mouth. He waited for her to say something so that he might know the cause of her distress. He imagined there was an excitement to knowing her mother was still out there and was now aware that her daughter was also, but a dread as well. A girl would be wondering about expectations, he supposed, now that she was no longer an anonymous creature of the House of Black and White.

"So, she knows about me then?" the girl asked quietly.

"Yes," he answered her simply.

"Was she… Did she…"

"Perhaps a man should tell more of his tale, and a girl will know how Lady Stoneheart and her band reacted to a man's revelation."

The Cat sat up straight and drained the remaining wine from her cup, then handed it to her master who placed the goblet on the table behind him before turning to face his apprentice. He focused his expressionless eyes on her face, waiting. She nodded her assent and he picked up where he had left off.

"The Lady remained still, seeming stunned," he described. "Her men were not so restrained. Many of them had known Arya Stark—a man did not realize his little Cat had wandered so far and wide in Westeros before coming to Braavos with his iron coin. They were shouting about a girl being kidnapped by a Hound and that she must have been raped and murdered by that monster. Others had heard tales of a girl stabbing some old enemies with her tiny skewer at some inn or another."

Here, her master watched her intently, searching for confirmation. She shrugged at him, leaving him to figure out the change in her prayer over time.

"Valar morghulis," she replied casually, suppressing the malicious smile fighting to pull up her lips at the memory.

Her master smirked at her, feeling something akin to pride, then continued, "But though they all had different things to say about this Arya Stark, none of their accounts matched a man's. Then there was this most extraordinary story of Arya Stark marrying and residing in the ruins of Winterfell."

The girl's shock showed on her face.

" _What?_ "

Jaqen recalled being a bit nonplussed himself initially when one of the knights mentioned the rumor about the youngest of the Stark girls and Ramsay Snow, now styled a _Bolton._ The tale was of a girl of an age with Arya who had the right build and the right coloring, with a requisite _Northerness_ about her, escorted by Lannister men to Winterfell and married off to Roose Bolton's mad son. The members of the Brotherhood were able to dispel the myth of her authenticity easily, since they knew Arya Stark had not remained in King's Landing and could not have been taken from there to Winterfell. But they could not accept the newcomer's words, either, unable to envision a plausible circumstance in which a girl of one or two and ten could have survived the terrors and perils of the wide world on her own. He considered all this as the girl awaited his elaboration, but opted instead to tell her an abbreviated version of the narrative.

"Yes, Arya Stark was escorted from King's Landing to Winterfell and married to the Bastard of Bolton."

"I thought you said there were things that were important for me to know! What sort of ridiculous story is this? Jaqen, we're not playing the lying game. You're just supposed to be telling me what happened!"

She looked irritated. He supposed he could not blame her. What he had related to her thus far was putting a strain on her composure and then to hear that she had been wedded and bedded, and supposedly to a man her father wouldn't have deigned to spit on, much less marry his precious daughter to, all while she was actually training to become an elite assassin must have been too much to tolerate.

"A man admits, he was hurt not to have received an invitation to the wedding…"

" _Jaqen!"_

She was quick but he was still quicker. He caught her left hook deftly between his palms and forced her hand back down into her lap.

"A man will have a hard time finishing his story if a girl knocks out his teeth. Patience, fierce little Cat. Draw in your claws and a man will explain himself."

She pulled her fist out of the trap of his hands and folded her arms across her chest, raising her eyebrows in a look of anticipation while glaring at him. When it seemed likely that she would restrain herself from trying to clout him again, he told her of the Brotherhood's reaction to his declaration that he had news of Arya Stark.

_The room was once again filled with the shouts of the Lady's followers, all insisting that one way or another, Arya Stark was dead. Everyone agreed that she had been alive right up until the time she was taken by the Hound but at some point after that, she had to have died, either by the Hound's hand or by the hand of some vengeful survivor of the Hound's massacre at the inn where she was rumored to have also killed a man. The inn keeper insisted he had seen the Hound and Arya leave together and the girl was alive and unharmed at that time, but after that, her trail had faded (as had Sandor Clegane’s). There was not a man among the Brotherhood who believed a young girl could have survived on her own in the harsh world that was Westeros since the beginning of the war. If she had not died by some violent means, then she had been taken by a fever and breathed her last, now existing only as an anonymous pile of bones somewhere, picked over by wolves and crows._

_"A girl did not die," Jaqen stated simply, artfully masking his disdain for their lack of faith in his remarkable apprentice. He had seen immediately the strength in her and the potential she possessed, even when she was still just a skinny child masquerading as a boy. These men had witnessed her leading her own small band in their escape from Harrenhal on stolen horses and knew what she had endured and survived up to that point. How could they doubt her now?_

_"Well, what happened to her, then?" the man who had translated for Lady Stoneheart demanded, his voice clearly signally his disinclination to believe the stranger._

_"A man gave her an iron coin to buy passage to Braavos when she escaped Harrenhal. After she left the Hound, she used it. She has been training in the House of Black and White these nearly three years past."_

_The looks on their faces ranged from confused to incredulous to outraged. Only the lady remained impassive._

_"Are you telling me," began the one-handed lion in a dubious tone, tinged with amusement, "that Arya Stark is training to become a… a_ Faceless Man _?"_

_"Just so," Jaqen replied._

_"How do you know this?" the large woman to the lion's right asked._

_"Because I am her master."_

_Within the space of a breath, he was surrounded by their drawn swords. He made no move, did not flinch, and uttered not a sound._

_The large woman looked accusingly at the man in the tattered yellow cloak, her face twisted into a terrible expression of outrage as she fairly screamed, "Why would you bring a Faceless Man here?"_

_"Well, I wouldn't have if I had known he was a Faceless Man, would I!" he shouted back at her._

_The accusations and insults and excuses continued to fly around the group until the Lady stepped off of her pedestal and brushed past her men, entering the circle ringed in sharp steel. She walked towards the stranger, only stopping when she was so close, he could hear her rasping breath over the protests of the Brotherhood, beseeching her to step away, certain he had been sent to dispatch her. She ignored their pleas and shouts of warning and stared into the assassin's eyes as she slowly pushed the hood away from her face and off of her head, letting it finally drop to her shoulders and drape her back. The flaccid flesh of her cheeks was so white that her pale hair hanging against them was barely noticeable. Lady Stoneheart stared at the assassin with such hollow, dark, sunken eyes that it appeared as if she had purposefully ringed them with thick smudges of the blackest kohl. The necrotic edges of the ragged wound of her neck moved slightly against each other as she wheezed out a faint command to the newcomer._

_"Come… with… me."_

* * *

 

"A man talked with the lady for a long time," Jaqen said to his apprentice. "First, she led a man from the cave to walk among the trees of the forest, adorned with countless swinging corpses, some old, and some fresh. She meant to show a man that the threat made earlier to string him up was no idle talk. But after a time, she bade a man to tell what he knew of Arya Stark."

"What did you say to her?" the girl asked breathlessly, leaning forward, hands grasping her knees tightly. "What did you tell my mother?"

"Everything."

"I don't know what that means, Jaqen. What's _everything_?"

"Everything that a man knew of what had happened to Arya Stark, he told Lady Stoneheart. He told of how a girl became a boy and journeyed in the company of dangerous criminals with the Night's Watch and how she delivered a man and his companions from a burning death even though she did not have to. He told of how a girl became a servant to her enemies then a ghost terrorizing a castle and then planned a daring rescue of her brother's men using only weasel soup. He told how she became a page in the service of a leech lord and kept her secret still, from all but a man. He told of her brave escape from Harrenhal…"

"You told her _that_?" she interrupted, sounding anxious.

"A man only told that a girl escaped, he did not tell how."

She nodded, seeming grateful, and relaxed her posture, leaning away from him once more. This made him feel a strange mix of sympathy and amusement. Of course she did not want her mother to think her a cold-blooded killer, yet she was purposefully pursuing a life which would reduce her to nothing but the thing she seemed ashamed of being just now. Additionally, the woman whose judgment she feared could herself be described in exactly the same way.

"The men of the Brotherhood were able to describe a girl's life from the time of her escape from the leech lord until she was taken by the Hound. A man learned things…"

Here, she had the good sense to blush. It wasn't that she wanted to keep secrets from her mentor, but she didn't like to think of those times so she didn't talk about it with _him_ so she wouldn't have to recall it _herself_. When she thought back to her capture by Lord Beric's men, she mostly just felt frustrated by her failure to accomplish _anything_ she had intended to. She had refused to leave with Jaqen when he first offered to take her with him despite her deep desire to join him. She thought she could not accept his offer because she was driven to accomplish things of great importance; tasks she felt were pressing enough for her to subvert her own wants. She needed to find her family. She needed to reunite her pack. That she had been unable to achieve a single one of her goals despite sacrificing her chance to join the assassin filled her with despair that was only compounded by the sting of abandonment by and disappointment in the people she had believed would stand by her: Hot Pie, Harwin, and Gendry.

"A man was then able to solve the mystery of what became of Arya Stark after the Hound died. For this, a mother was most grateful."

He did not tell the girl what further he had discussed with the Grey Lady. Some things were important for a girl to know while other things were just as important for her _not_ to know, at least not yet. So the explanation he gave Lady Stoneheart for his visit and what he needed from her as well as the ensuing argument with the one-handed lion and the only female knight among the brotherhood, he kept to himself.

"What did you mean about me getting married, Jaqen?"

"A girl mistakes a man. The news he received from these knights was that _Arya Stark_ had been married, not a girl."

She gave him an exasperated look and awaited his explanation. Instead, she received his criticism.

"A girl is neither lazy nor stupid. Use your wits, foolish child! How could a girl be married to Ramsay Bolton _and_ be an acolyte in the House of Black and White?"

She wrinkled her nose as if smelling something unpleasant but then cocked her head and looked off to the side. He watched as her eyes took on a far-away look and then her gaze drifted to rest on the floor. Slowly, her face relaxed, the wrinkles in her brow smoothing as her mouth opened into a small _o._ She straightened and then leaned toward her master, trying to read in his face the truth of what she had puzzled out.

"An imposter?" she mused. "But _who_?"

"The _who_ is not so important," her mentor told her. "It's the _why_ that matters."

"The why is obvious," she retorted. "Without any living brothers and Sansa missing, possibly dead, an Arya Stark in Winterfell gives her husband all the stake he needs."

"Yes, lovely girl. A union with Arya Stark is a very valuable thing. She is the key to the entire North."

And with the reports and rumors of what was occurring beyond the wall, the North was the key to the future of Westeros.

* * *

The afternoon was waning and as the dusk settled over Braavos, there was a knock at the door. The Lorathi answered it to find the inn keeper had sent a young pot boy up to inquire after their supper plans. After exchanging a few words, Jaqen had arranged to have a meal brought to them and the pot boy ran off, promising to send their familiar tavern girl back with a tray and more wine. Turning around after bolting the door and leaning his back against it, he then eyed his slender, black-clad apprentice sitting upright on the other side of the bed with her back to the door. The bed covers still were made up and relatively undisturbed.

"A wench will likely be more scandalized by the bed's unused appearance once again than she would be to find a captain and a widow unclothed, wrapped in blankets together," he observed. "Perhaps to keep appearances up…"

The Cat twisted slightly in her place and turned her head to give him a withering look, hissing, "How _can_ you jest right now?"

Her thoughts were tangled, her head heavy with wine and uncertainty. So much about her world had changed, all in an afternoon. She was slowly realizing that she would have to make decisions and then act on them. It was uncomfortable and a little daunting after so many years as an acolyte, sheltered in many ways, instructed and directed, somewhat insulated from the possibilities of her own poor choices.

Her master left his position by the door and walked around the bed. He came to rest behind the chair in which he had sat to tell the latest part of his story. Grasping the chair's back and leaning down over it so that he could meet her eyes, he gave her a serious look and in that damnable throaty purr of his, he answered her rhetorical question with one of his own.

"Why must a man be jesting?"

She drew back only fractionally, eyes widening just a bit, and opened her mouth as if to gasp involuntarily, then drew upon her lessons and vowed not to let him unnerve her as was obviously his intention. Her face relaxed as she exhibited her typical sardonic air and then tilted her head while cocking an eyebrow at him.

"If you think it wise, master, then I trust your judgment," she drawled and then reclining seductively to the side, propping up on one elbow as her long braid fell and struck the bed, emphasized, " _completely._ "

Jaqen's false face was as implacable as ever but his captain's brow creased a bit as his bronze eyes travelled down her face and neck, appraising her curves and lines. He studied her languid posture and then met her gaze once again, her eyes appearing almost a smoky grey beneath the dark fringe of her lashes. With a slight shake of his head, he stood up straight, releasing the chair back as he exhaled audibly and turned to grab her veil from the table behind him.

"A girl should guard her face until the wench leaves the tray," he said dismissively, tossing her the wispy cloth.

Her smirk was immediate but she bit her lip in an attempt to expel it, lest Jaqen see. She was certain that if she gloated, she would pay for it later, and her master was infinitely better at these games than she.

But she was learning.


	19. Chapter 19

The widow was arranging her veil atop her dark hair while her master took a seat in the chair furthest from the bed. He poured the last of the Pentoshi Amber into the as yet unused goblet, the companion to her own, and took a long swallow. Beneath her rearranged shroud, the girl allowed herself a small smile. The Lorathi did not indulge in spirits except with meals, so she assumed she must have managed to disturb his peace a bit if he was driven to retreat from her and drink. _Well, good_. He had certainly tormented her enough times that he deserved his own little comeuppance. Some of her delight in his presumed discomfort was likely being fueled by the wine he had insisted she drink. She was unaccustomed to more than watered wine with her dinner and even that typically made her feel sleepy. The effects of her two goblets of Pentoshi Amber made her feel somewhat light-headed and unaccountably saucy. She also found herself enamored with the _power_ she felt when she saw that her own efforts at playing at seduction had affected her master. She had never understood women who used their beauty and sensuality to manipulate and control the men in their world. To her, resorting to such tactics indicated a degree of weakness and was therefore distasteful. She had always thought it better to best a man with her wits or her sword or some other show of strength, _forcing_ him to yield to her. She had never believed in giving a man sultry gazes through fluttering eyelashes or using suggestive double-speak to win favor, directing his actions by manipulating his emotions and his lust. But after what she had just seen, she wasn't so sure anymore. A pose, a look, a few words that might be taken one way or another, and an attacker retreated. It certainly warranted further exploration.

 _As a tactic,_ she thought. Flirtation certainly _seemed_ to have a practical function.

The Cat stood to stretch but felt a surge of light-headedness when she did and so sat back down immediately, placing a hand on her temple to get her bearings. Her display was not missed by her master, who advised her to be careful.

"A man fears a wanton widow will forget her courtesies if she gets too deep in her cups and may throw herself at a lonely ship's captain. A man out to sea for months would be hard pressed to resist such a lovely lady's charms."

She rolled her eyes and answered him with a most unladylike snort.

"I hardly think being slightly dizzy is a sign that I'm ready to throw all caution to the wind and bed down with a salty old mariner," she laughed, sounding as if the idea were the most ridiculous thing she could possibly contemplate. "Especially one with a forked beard!"

"Even if a salty old mariner has _bronze_ eyes?" he teased.

She felt a slight blush move across her cheek in a warm wave and was thankful for the veil. She huffed a little, cursing her stupid mouth for ever uttering the word _bronze_ in her master's presence but attempted to deflect her discomfort onto him.

" _You_ were the one who poured the wine. Maybe _you_ should be careful, or a blameless widow might begin to suspect that her gallant captain is actually a wretch trying to get her drunk for _sinister purposes_."

"A captain has no use for a woman giddy with wine," he assured her, arranging his weathered seaman's face into an imperious expression. His smug manner irritated her and her own drunkenness emboldened her. Remembering the feeling of power she had only just been contemplating, she impulsively decided to test her skills at flirtation. Could she playfully beguile her master? She shook off Umma's voice, which had suddenly popped into her head, … _when you flirt with a certain Lorathi…,_ and tried very hard to call up her inner seductress. She became concerned when it seemed she had no inner seductress, but the wine quickly dismissed that concern and she persisted in carrying her plan out anyway.

"Oh, really?" she queried coyly in a voice that mimicked her master's Lorathi purr almost perfectly. She rose easily in an unhurried way from the bed and drifted slowly toward him. "A _captain_ may have no use for a woman giddy with wine, but perhaps a _man_ might."

As she breathed the last few words, she placed her hands on each side of him, delicately gripping the arms of his chair, trapping him in his seat. She bent at the waist so that her veiled eyes were even with his own, her nose only a short two inches from his. His cup was frozen in the air at the level of his chest, clutched in his hand, the ascent to his lips arrested as she approached him. His face remained immobile as his molten eyes pierced her veil and held her gaze for a long moment. He then leaned slowly forward until his nose nearly brushed hers and inhaled and then exhaled slowly, his warm breath caressing her face.

"A man has said once today already that a girl plays a dangerous game," he replied softly, the timbre of his voice low and only just audible to her ear.

A mischievous smile curved her lips slightly at their corners as she crinkled her eyes but she fought to keep her voice very serious when she parroted a version of his own words back to him, saying in a breathy whisper, "Why must it be a game?"

Jaqen's eyes narrowed slightly as he considered her words, her tone, and her very _nearness_. After a slight pause, he tilted his face and leaned even closer, his nose now brushing along the side of hers and grazing her cheek through the gauzy veil, pressing the thin material to her skin. His lips were so close to hers that they nearly touched. She dared not move, unsure which direction she should shift, anyway; a fraction backward to release herself from his hypnotic touch or a fraction forward to complete the kiss that seemed just on the verge of occurring? Despite her adamant inward command that it be still, her heart beat frantically within her chest and she felt its pounding in her ears. Jaqen's nose tickled her flesh and she had to fight her overwhelming urge to shiver. She felt his lips part slightly and closed her eyes with anticipation then heard him say in the faintest of whispers, "A man has always said that a girl has more courage than sense."

Whether he meant to pull away from her and leave his words as a humiliating rebuke or to lean in further, closing that spare breath of space between them, making his words a prelude to a kiss, she would never know. A knock at the door interrupted their dalliance. Their supper had arrived.

Hearing the sharp rap at the door, the Cat straightened immediately, feeling her dizziness acutely as she did. She used the chair nearest the bed to stabilize herself, gripping its back. Jaqen rose from his seat, smirked at her unsteadiness, and answered the door. She pulled the chair she used for support back toward the table so that she might sit in it to sup. As the tavern wench and the little pot boy placed their food on the small table, the widow sat down and inspected what had been brought for them. Roasted goat with a savory white leek sauce, charred onions and pears sprinkled with crumbles of goat cheese, and another loaf of warm bread and honey along with wine that appeared to be one of the sweet reds from the Reach.

The Cat allowed the scent of the food to fill her nostrils and pulled her chair in closer to the table. She sat primly in her seat, head slightly bowed, as the tavern girl set a small, empty platter before the widow and one directly opposite her where she assumed the captain would sit. As the rosy-cheeked serving girl filled their plates with a generous portion of each of the dishes, the widow maintained her shy demeanor, not speaking, keeping her hands folded in her lap. Her demure posture and actions belied the teasingly lustful display she had only just exhibited for her master.

The servants withdrew after Jaqen pressed more coin in their hands and whispered something into the wench's ear. She was definitely less giddy and effervescent after a full day's work in the tavern, but she was no less buxom or overtly flirtatious. The Cat scowled from beneath her veil at the way the prettily plump girl blushed at the assassin's whispered words. She found herself wondering if Jaqen had been _savoring_ those full, pink lips. The thought upset her, which made her scowl even more because she couldn't quite understand why she should be so bothered. There was a feeling gnawing at her gut that she might have named jealousy if she hadn't simply started stuffing it down without further exploration, as was her habit. Without turning to look at her, her mentor sensed her peevishness and spoke.

"Why does a widow scowl so?"

A dozen thoughts and accusations and half-formed feelings tossed about inside of her skull. _You're my master, not hers. Goat is on the menu, not pretty tavern wench. Why do I want to vomit when I see you whisper in her ear? How can you be thinking of anything else right now when so much is at stake? Dragons are in Dorne and my mother is alive but instead of formulating a plan, you're making pretty girls blush. You're wasting time on stupid things when you should be telling me the rest of your tale. You seem awfully familiar with that wench. You've probably been kissing_ her _but you came so close and yet_ didn't _kiss me._

Here, she startled herself with her own thought and gave a nervous laugh. Her master eyed her sharply and she grasped desperately at her querulous thoughts and yanked one out to cover over that last before Jaqen somehow magically read it on her face. _Bloody faceless Lorathi!_

"You looked like you were hungrier for tavern wench than goat," she grumbled with more bitterness in her voice than she had intended to show. "That bed is not big enough for the three of us. Do you wish me to leave?"

He appraised the mattress casually as if truly considering the dimensions of the large bed and then retorted, "No, it seems adequate and a widow is really quite small. A man sees no reason for you to depart."

She removed her veil and took a bite of the tender goat as her mentor took his seat at the table. Though her expression remained stoic, her irritation was made apparent by the aggressive way she ground the meat between her teeth, her jaw muscles clenching and unclenching with her effort to restrain her desire to unleash the tirade bubbling up in her throat. Swallowing down both her harsh words and her supper, she reminded Jaqen that he had yet to finish recounting his travels to her.

"Just so," he agreed. "What does a capricious widow wish to know?"

She bit her lip and felt the temporary courage given her by the Pentoshi Amber slipping away as the food settled in her stomach. Suddenly less _saucy_ , she wondered if she should be concerned that her master thought her _capricious_. As if sensing her conflict, the captain filled her goblet with the sweet red wine provided for their supper and pushed it toward her. She took a small sip and then posed a question.

"When you were in the Riverlands, did you have to kill anyone?"

There was a small tingle of fear in her chest that she tried to ignore as she awaited his answer. When he initially related his meeting with the Brotherhood without Banners, she had been so taken aback by the revelation that her mother lived still that she hadn't stopped to consider that though her master found her and her compatriots alive, he might not have left them that way. His mother was part of his mission, he had said, and her knights certainly seemed to fear his purpose there. _Could someone have prayed for her mother's death?_

"No one who did not need killing," he replied after he swallowed his mouthful of pears and goat cheese.

 _Bloody hells, what did_ that _mean?_

Her worry was displayed plainly upon her brow and her master leaned slightly forward, his bronze eyes soft as he sought to give her some peace.

"A man did no harm to Lady Stoneheart. She walked still as a man rode northward."

She relaxed back into her chair and blew out the breath that she had not realized she was holding. She gave him a weak smile, grateful for the relief her mentor's words had brought her.

"So, your stay with the Brotherhood was short?"

"A man said no such thing," he replied. "The Brotherhood had a collective wisdom about the happenings in a girl's homeland. Staying with them and riding with them for a time allowed a man to learn all that they knew."

Swallowing another gulp of her sweet wine and enjoying the warmth she felt as it trailed down her throat, she laughed, demanding he tell her _three new things._

"A girl must be careful," he chided. "The principal elder is not mocked."

"I'm not _mocking_ him!" she gasped as if insulted. "I'm _emulating_ him! I'm told that's a sincere form of flattery. Shouldn't we all strive to be more like the Kindly Man?"

The look on his face suggested that perhaps that goal was… _ill-advised?_

Another swallow of wine and then a declaration of, "I'll have my three things, Jaqen! What did a Dornish-Lorathi faceless-assassin-brother-without-a-banner learn during his time riding alongside Lem Lemoncloak and Tom o' Sevens?" and her master shrugged and obliged her.

"He learned that a girl rode better than any man among their band save one Northman who exceeded her in years of experience with Northern horses."

"A useless tidbit!" she cried. "Any man with sense could puzzle that out with no input from others if he knew the girl in question grew up in the Northern household of a great lord. What else?"

"He learned that a merciless lady has nearly rid the land of any Frey bold enough to venture beyond the walls of the Twins, and a number of lesser Lannisters, besides."

A rapturous look that could only be borne of the satisfaction one derives from meting out righteous vengeance lit up her face. In that moment, Jaqen felt the depths of her hatred for her enemies and the love she bore her family. It survived still, even after her long absence from Westeros; after all the heartbreak she had endured; after her own years of training under the tutelage of the brothers of the House of Black and White, which had been meant to strip those things from her forever. In that moment, he witnessed the parts of her that she kept hidden deep inside and it fairly robbed him of his breath. In that moment, she was no lovely girl; she was a creature of unparalleled magnificence. Her beauty had become ethereal in his eyes.

They continued to stare at each other, his bronze gaze full of wonder as he memorized her as she existed in that moment while hers radiated the simple joy of knowing a devout, long-whispered prayer had been finally answered. She then prompted him to speak with four words.

"And the third thing?"

"A man learned that a young bastard knight of noble stock now trains the orphans of the land that find their way to him so that they may join the Brotherhood and continue carrying out Lady Stoneheart's revenge."

His words called something to mind. _A young bastard knight… of noble stock…_

_"Gendry?"_

"Ser Gendry, now, he is styled," her master answered, studying her reaction to his news. "The bastard of Baratheon. Well, one of them."

 _Ser_ _Gendry_ , she thought with a bitter inward laugh as she gulped down two huge swallows of the delicious wine. _I ought to punch him in his stupid, knightly face_.

"A girl knew this knight, yes?"

"He was no knight then," she growled.

Her master seemed to mislike her tone. He clenched the stem of his goblet tighter and leaned toward her, asking, "Did this _Gendry_ hurt a girl?"

There seemed to be a threat in his tone and the wine was impeding her ability to interpret it easily. It suddenly dawned on her that her master might be asking if she was implying that the obstinate bull had… _violated_ her in some way. She snorted, thinking how she always believed Gendry considered her as he considered Hot Pie—just another one of the boys. Besides, if he had ever tried to lay a wrong finger on her, she would have cut that finger off and then gutted him like a fish. But still, there was a comfort in knowing that Jaqen cared and seemed inclined to protect her. She felt the same warm contentment settle over her that she had experienced when he had held her in his arms after she realized that the ghost of High Heart knew her mother would be slain under Walder Frey's roof.

"Yes, he _hurt_ a girl, but not how _you_ mean," she answered him sourly, not elaborating.

This seemed to satisfy him and he released his cup and continued eating. The food really was quite tasty. They chewed and swallowed in silence for a few minutes as Arya recalled Gendry and Hot Pie and their wild flight from Harrenhal; their arguments and conversations; their foraging and hunger and childish hopes as they desperately sought a path to Riverrun; a route to safety and comfort. Thinking of it all made her sad, though, so she sought to distract herself.

"What else did you learn while among the Brotherhood?" she asked her mentor as she reached for the warm bread loaf and tore off a generous portion. She picked off a smaller piece of her bread and began dabbing at the delectable sauce that pooled around her goat. She felt an urge to just lean down and lick the stuff directly off her platter, but astutely recognized that the desire probably just stemmed from the wine and used her bread for the task instead.

 _Wouldn’t Sansa be proud,_ was her fleeting thought.

Jaqen took another sip of his wine and allowed it to settle in his stomach before answering her. He seemed almost reluctant to resume his tale and this made his apprentice nervous.

"What is it?" she impelled him softly.

"Perhaps a girl should finish her meal first."

She mulled over his advice but then sighed and admitted that she did not think she could eat while worried that he had something awful to tell her.

"You might as well just say it, Jaqen."

He nodded, acquiescing to her urging and then took another bite of his meat, lifting the forkful to his mouth as the Cat watched a few drops of the leek sauce drip from the roasted goat and land on his platter. He chewed slowly and then washed down the food with another gulp of wine before he told her the thing that they had both been dreading.

"A man heard tell of a girl's bastard brother, Lord Snow, betrayed by his own men and slaughtered at the Wall."

She stood so quickly that she knocked her goblet over, spilling what was left of her wine across the table. The cup rolled off the edge and then struck the floor, its metal bowl and stem clattering onto the wooden boards and then skittering until it came to rest against the near wall. Her slender fingers grasped the edge of the table, turning her knuckles white. She searched her master's false face for the indication she _knew_ must be there—that this was a tasteless jest, or else a complete misunderstanding. Yes, that _must_ be it. The wine was wreaking havoc on her wits and she had merely misheard him. He must have actually said her brother, her sweet Jon, the hero of her girlhood, was _beloved_ by his own men, and _safeguarded_ at the Wall. But her mentor continued to regard her with that _look_ , that detestable _pity,_ and she felt the bile in her throat as panic rose up within her and threatened to sweep her away into hysteria.

" _Jaqen,_ " she pled in a frayed whimper. He remained still, watching her with that maddening _sympathy_ that told her she had not mistaken his words, and for an unreasoning instant, she hated him for it.

Arya stumbled backwards, turning to hide the anguish that poured forth in the hot tears she had begun to believe she was no longer capable of summoning. She collapsed to the floor, rocking on her knees which had buckled beneath her, feeling the rough wooden planks against her palms as she bowed her forehead to touch them, assuming the posture of a supplicant beseeching her god for succor, certain that her heart was freezing within her chest, so painful did it feel just then.

 _Stupid, stupid girl! Did you think Jon was safe? That he would remain untouched at the Wall? Did you think that just because he was important to you and you loved him that he would be protected from all the evils of the world?_ that hushed, hateful little voice berated her from the far corner of her mind.

And in truth, she _had_ thought it. Gods preserve her, she _had._ She never spared a worry for Jon; brave Jon, _safe_ at the Wall, surrounded by a thousand men with swords, all under his own wise command. She spent her worries on other things; things less sure. Jon was tucked safely away in that small pocket of her cares which she felt so confident were inviolable, impervious to harm. What a fool she was! What a great, imbecilic, naïve fool!

She had not realized she was still capable of the depths of grief she now felt. Her ability to experience such suffocating and bottomless suffering had died when she had been unable to save her father, paralyzed as she was at Baelor's feet, Needle uselessly gripped in her trembling, grimy little hand. Or so she had thought. Yet here was an anguish so enveloping, she could hardly bear it; a harsh admonition for her hubris at believing herself beyond its reach.

Her master was frozen in place, breathing deeply to dispel his own misery at her despair; a despair he had wrought. He closed his eyes and pressed the heels of his hands hard against his eyes, forcing the image of a lovely girl's sorrow from his vision. The rising sound of her ragged sobbing snapped the invisible cords holding him in his chair and he rose with determination, meaning to right his offense and quiet a girl's mournful keening.

Arya squeezed her eyes shut tightly, trying to stem the flow of her tears as she felt her master lift her from the floor. He cradled her in his arms as one might cradle a wounded child ( _for wasn’t that what she was?_ ) and she tried to be indignant about it but couldn't muster the strength from under the weight of her utter desolation. She had only _thought_ her whole world had been changed in an afternoon. Now, the seams of her reality completely unraveled, she knew it without a doubt. She would never be the same.

_Could never be…_

The girl opened her eyes as her master laid her gently on the bed, pillows under her head, and her vision was blurry through her tears. She wanted to hear more, to hear it all, but also wanted to hear him say it was not true and that he had discovered the lie with further questioning of her mother's men. She wanted this to be a dream; a nightmare from which she would suddenly wake, shaking off the terror she felt with a laugh as she realized its baselessness. She wanted the crushing sensation in her chest to go away, whatever the price for it. She wanted _Jon_.

She realized then how much she had been counting on her brother; how she must have always planned to go to him someday. She had never articulated her own desire to herself or anyone else, but there it was. In six months or a year or twenty years or when they were both stooped and grey and aching with rheumatism, she wasn't sure, but she had always understood that she would reunite with Jon Snow. She had _known_ that she would see him again; known it in her very bones even as the knowledge was hidden from her conscious mind. And in her bones, she felt it still, as surely as she felt Jaqen's thumb softly brushing the steadily trekking tears from her cheek.

 _This wasn't right_. Something deep inside her rebelled and her tears slowed and then stopped. She didn't know how, but she could _feel_ that it wasn't right. She needed her mentor to tell her more. It took her a long while to regain enough control over her voice to ask him for what she needed, though. During the wordless lull, Jaqen continued stroking her face, soothing the stinging flesh made raw by the overabundance of tears she had cried. Her cheeks were unaccustomed to such an insult as she had not wept with that sort of abandon in years. Or, actually, _ever_.

After drawing in several hitching breaths and sniffling like a stupid little girl, she was able to regain her voice enough to ask him to tell her more. To tell her _all_. Her master looked at her doubtfully and seemed about to suggest she rest and regain her composure before he say anything further. He seemed… _afraid_ , somehow. And he was—afraid to say a thing which might reduce her once again to inconsolable lamentation as he uselessly looked on. She saw it laid plain in his eyes and she clutched at his wrist and pressed his hand to her damp cheek.

" _Please_ , Jaqen," she begged, closing her eyes, feeling his touch as she released his wrist and slid her palm over his hand, trapping it; holding it there against her face. "I need to know."

The fear in his eyes softened into a look of reluctant capitulation. He leaned over her, sighing, and brushed his lips against her forehead, murmuring, "Did a man not say that with such a look, a girl could own most men, _and_ their secrets?"

His apprentice smiled sadly at his gentle teasing as he pulled his face away from hers, not hearing the sincere powerlessness behind his words. _He_ was the master and _she_ the acolyte, yet he was helpless against her tears and her pleading, driven to obey her wishes even though his own better judgment urged him to spare her, at least temporarily, from the knowledge she desired. When he thought back over their life together, he remembered suddenly when he met his _evil child_ and he began to realize that she had always possessed this power; the ability to bend him to her will, if only her want of his obedience was deep enough. The Lorathi wondered if this was another of her unique gifts from the old gods or only some mark of his own failings.

He pulled his hand from beneath hers, abandoning the softness of her cheek in an attempt to regain his authority. He found his concentration inadequate to both quell the chaos of his thoughts and maintain his false face. He must sacrifice one to preserve the other. The captain placed his hand across his forehead and eyes, giving the appearance of a man who had just received distressing news, then pulled his fingers down over the weathered skin and grizzled beard, erasing the Pentoshi features and returning the flesh to its original Lorathi countenance.

The girl questioned his action with her eyes but he did not answer the question and she did not voice it. He rose from her side and returned to the table for his cup. She made to sit up and follow him but he lifted his hand in a gesture meant to stay her movements as he drank deeply of the sweet red. She obeyed him, for once, and did not leave her place, but instead arranged the soft pillows in a high stack, dropping back against them in a more upright position than she had previously had. Having drained his goblet, her master returned it to the table and walked back to the bed, settling himself on its edge, his back to the girl laid out atop it in her widow's garb.

"A man knows his lovely girl wishes his news of her brother was untrue," he began, addressing his words toward the wall beyond the table, "but it was received from a most reliable source. There was a witness to this thing among the men of the Brotherhood."

"Who?" she asked simply, her voice still sounding forlorn and shaky from the effects of her uncontrolled sobbing.

"A black brother who escaped the wall during the murder."

"A _deserter_ from the Night's Watch? You trusted the word of an oathbreaker?"

"This _oathbreaker_ counted your brother as his most trusted mentor. He felt that to leave the crows who had killed his Lord Commander was not oathbreaking, but oath _keepng_. He intended to rally support from one crown or another to punish the turncloaks and restore order to the brotherhood of the Night's Watch."

"So why then was he found among a _different_ brotherhood rather than at the Wall, overseeing the punishment of Jon's murderers?" she demanded.

"He did not find the help he sought from any king but secured the promise of the Brotherhood without Banners that this injustice would be avenged."

This surprised her. Catelyn Stark had been as indifferent to Arya's half-brother as Arya was attached to him. Indifferent, and even _resentful_. Her mother had never treated Jon as anything other than an interloper and a threat to the Starks. Why would she agree to lift a finger for his sake _now_ , when it could make no difference anyway?

"Brilliant. Another riddle for which I have no answer," she muttered, causing Jaqen to shift his position, turning so that he could look at her, trying to understand her meaning. Seeing his face flustered her, so habituated had she become to hearing his dire words pour forth from the captain's mouth. She shook her head slightly to indicate that he should ignore her pronouncement; that it was of no consequence to his own telling of the story. She bade him continue. Of course, he obliged her.

"There was some disagreement among the brothers of the Night's Watch about the ever increasing numbers of wildings south of the Wall and how their Lord Commander planned to utilize them in defense of the realm. Also, a problem with Arya Stark's husband occupying Winterfell and demanding that _his_ Arya, who had disappeared, be returned to him. Your brother planned a march on Winterfell to make Bolton's bastard answer for his insult, and possibly rescue his little sister and a wilding king, but he never got the chance."

The Lorathi related to the Cat how some of her brother's most trusted men had stabbed him and watched him bleed upon the snows outside of Hardin's Tower at Castle Black. He described how the Lord Commander's loyal squire, a boy with the unlikely name of _Satin_ , had tried in vain to stop the rogue clan of traitorous brothers from murdering Lord Snow but was too late and far too outnumbered to do more than grab whatever provisions he found en route to the stables, saddle a horse and ride for his own life, intent on spreading the news of the mutiny to anyone who could help him set it right. Unable to find King Stannis, the boy rode further and further south, intending to ride all the way to the capital and into the throne room, right up to the iron throne if he had to, demanding justice for his slain commander. Somewhere south of Greywater Watch, Satin had been intercepted by one of the continually roving bands of Lady Stoneheart's men and hearing his tale, they brought him to their mistress. Thoros had searched for the truth of the boy's words in his fires and had seen that his account was accurate, but also something else.

Here, her master paused, and the girl felt her skin prickle with anticipation.

"What?" she pressed. "What did Thoros see?"

"A man does not wish for a girl to excite herself," he started cautiously. She sighed, making her impatience an audible thing and gave him a condescending look.

"I'm no pampered maiden, blushing and giggling whenever a handsome knight deigns to smile at me or fainting at the slightest hint of unpleasant news. You can _tell_ me, Jaqen. Don't you know me _at all_?"

"A man _thought_ he knew his apprentice," he retorted. "But this weeping, fragile woman, he is _not_ acquainted with."

Her cheeks burned with shame. She turned away from him, trying to curse her weakness, but unable to truly repent the grief she experienced for Jon. Her sorrow was pure and compelling and undeniable. Still, she wished her master had not witnessed her collapse even as she coveted his comfort.

"A man's only wish is that a girl is not hurt any further," he told her gently.

"Jaqen, despite how it seems, I _am_ strong," she assured him, looking at the bolted door rather than his face. "And I will not weep again."

"It is not a girl's tears a man fears. It is raising in her false hope that he wishes to avoid."

The girl turned to face her master once more and then sat up, placing her hand lightly upon his shoulder. He turned his head down, tracing the contour of her fingers with his eyes, feeling her touch through the leather of his jerkin. He inclined his head further and brushed his chin against her wrist, back and forth, scratching her with the rough stubble of his unshaven face. It was a tender gesture of affection and comfort that spoke of their familiarity. He had warned her against _false hope_ and she promised herself she would guard against it, but still she heard _hope_ and she craved it even though she knew she should not.

"It's alright," she whispered, her hand at his shoulder increasing the strength of her grasp infinitesimally. He read the tiny gesture and knew her mounting tension.

"Thoros saw that the squire had the right of it; that a girl's brother was murdered as he had described," her mentor submitted, "but he also saw that the boy still walked, a great white wolf at his side, and that a fire burned bright within his heart, as hot and fierce as dragon's breath."

The Cat snatched her hand from her master's shoulder and slapped it over her own mouth, drawing her breath in sharply and feeling the ice around her heart melt in an instant, soaring joy fighting to burst forth from within her.

"He survived the attack!" she cried through her fingers.

"Or was resurrected," Jaqen proposed. "But a girl cannot know this truly. What the Red priests see in their flames… It is no certain thing. Often, mistakes are made."

"But _Jaqen_ ," she started, ignoring her mentor's caution against false hope, "I _know_ Thoros. I've seen his power. This… this is _real_."

 _I feel it_ , she did not say. _I know it to be true._

"A man rode north," he told her. "He was unable to find evidence of the Red priest's visions. A man is sorry, lovely girl."

She accepted his condolence, even as she smiled inwardly, knowing the truth. _Her brother was alive, and so was Ghost._

She would have her reunion after all.


	20. Chapter 20

The Cat seemed remarkably poised, considering her wine intake and all the news she had heard that day, so her master was encouraged and became convinced that he could tell her about the rest of his journey across Westeros without distressing her significantly. He described some of the time he spent with the Brotherhood without Banners (though, of course, not _all_ of it) and much of the news of the realm he had learned while in a girl's homeland—news which did not impact his apprentice personally and so was more interesting than troublesome to her. He described his ride north, a part of the tale in which she seemed particularly interested. She was keen to know the very minute details, so hungry was she for descriptions of her childhood home. He obliged her, telling her of the vast plains of snow and ice he had seen, and of the drifts that had formed against the walls of various holdfasts, as tall as a man standing atop the shoulders of another man. He even described the glimpse he had had of Winterfell from a distance. She had grilled him about what he could see, desirous to understand the extent of the damage caused by Theon's sacking of the castle.

"There was some talk of the damage actually being caused by Bolton's bastard, Arya Stark's devoted husband," he revealed to her conspiratorially. "Men in taverns are not the most trustworthy sources, but if you listen carefully, you will sometimes hear some grains of truth you might not otherwise learn."

This was a lesson she did not need—she had learned plenty by talking little and listening always around the taverns of Braavos. But still, she was reluctant to allow Theon Greyjoy the benefit of her doubt.

Her mentor passed briefly over his experience at the Wall. He had approached Castle Black wearing the face of a common Northern boy without many prospects, presenting himself for training to become a black brother. In this way, he endeavored to spend time learning what had transpired there. He left, of course, well short of the time at which he would be required to say his vows. The brothers were tight-lipped about what had happened to their former Lord Commander, but he was able to confirm through means surer than fire-gazing that the boy had indeed been murdered, and at the hands of men he had trusted. Since no one talked of his survival or resurrection, the assassin had assumed that the vision was a mistake on the part of the deteriorating Red priest in Lady Stoneheart's service (Jaqen's apprentice knew differently, but said nothing and allowed him to continue his recounting unimpeded). From the Wall, he travelled to White Harbor and then Maidenpool, wearing yet another face in the service of the order, performing one task or another that he insisted she would not find interesting and was not allowed to know the details of, anyway.

"It is not a girl's business to know," he said simply. His apprentice might have bristled at this, but she chose to let it go.

"Did you ever hear any news of my sister?" the Cat asked sleepily, stifling a yawn.

"Only rumors, lovely girl, and none that a man could confirm, each purporting a different fate for her. Most often, it was said that she had married a dwarf, murdered his royal nephew, and flown across the water to Essos, but this seems doubtful."

She nodded, agreeing that the tale did not sound like Sansa _at all_. Especially the part about marrying a dwarf. She imagined her sister would slit her own throat before allowing that to happen. She would have had to be tricked into it somehow.

Her master did not tell her of the more likely and more disturbing rumor; that the oldest Stark girl was a creature of Lord Baelish, playing some important role in one of the scoundrel's more convoluted and sinister plots and that he had married her to some heir or another and planned to spring her on the North when the time was right. Or, perhaps spring her child instead, providing it was a son. A boy would be more likely to win the North's allegiance anyway, and Littlefinger was nothing if not practical.

After telling nearly his entire tale, Jaqen rose from the acolyte’s side where he had been sitting as she lay back against the stack of pillows and told her he had matters to tend to just then.

"In the gloom of night?" she laughed, glancing out of the open window at the darkness.

"A man has duties," he said simply, "but will return. A girl will stay here."

"Is lounging in a rented room in the nicest inn in Braavos part of my training?" she asked dubiously, smirking at him.

" _Obedience_ is part of a girl's training," he replied with no trace of mirth and then repeated, "A girl will stay _here_."

"And a man will return," she answered coldly, not sure why his command irked her. Perhaps it was just fatigue. And of course there was the fact that she still hated to be told what to do.

"Yes, a man will return," he agreed, ignoring her tone as he unbolted the door and placed his hand on the latch, "and in time to tuck an evil child in for the night."

He closed the door behind him just as the pillow she threw struck the wall where his head had only just been a second before, her strangled scream chasing him down the hallway.

It was only a quarter of an hour later when there came a knock at the door once again. It would be the tavern wench, the Cat suspected, and her giant breasts, coming to clean up the supper things. She placed the veil once again over her face and opened the door to see the wench along with two boys, the young pot boy who she had seen earlier and another boy, older, probably of an age with the Cat. Her surprise showed on her face (though the crowd in her doorway was unlikely to note the look through the veil) as she registered the large tub the boys carried between them and the pail of steaming water in the wench's hand.

"Begging your pardon, M'lady," the wench said in a tone that suggested she was _not_ , in fact, begging a lady's pardon, "but the captain, he said you would be wanting a bath and we could bring it when we came to clean the supper."

The servants swept past her and began to do their work while the widow stood back, aghast. _What in the seven bloody hells…_ As if in answer, the wench spoke to the widow.

"The captain said that you were left out of sorts by grief and wine and he thought a bath might restore you."

_Grief and wine, indeed._ It made sense. It was a story the servants of the inn would accept, a grieving widow drowning her sorrows in her wine. And it just so happened that it was mostly true, although she wasn't sure she would have used such as mild turn of phrase as "out of sorts" to describe anything she had felt that day.

As the tavern girl gathered the supper dishes, stacking them and frowning at the spilled wine before wiping it up, the boys began traipsing in and out of the room, carrying steaming pail after steaming pail of water and dumping it into the great wooden basin. The wench left with the dishes then returned as the boys completed their task. In her hands she held some clean linen, a brush for scrubbing, a chunk of brownish soap, a large comb, and… _something else._

"What _is_ that," the widow demanded, pointing to the bundles of long, fine cloth draped over the servant's arm.

"Oh!" the wench exclaimed, her dimples showing then. "This is the most beautiful gown and robe! It's really so fine…" The girl's voice trailed off, sounding dreamy, as if she could think of nothing better in this world than a gown and a robe that were _really_ _so fine_. The widow scowled, uncertain of the meaning of a _gown_ and a _robe_ in this instance but misliking the way the wench said it, feeling as if she was about to hear the end of a jape and it would be at her expense.

"Are you bringing those garments to the next room?" the widow queried in her Pentoshi-accented Braavosi. "Is there another lady you need to deliver things to? I'll not hold you here, if you'll just leave the bath things."

"Oh, no! These things are for _you_ , M'lady," the girl answered, giggling. "The captain, he said your widow's gown would need washing. He said it smelled of the sea."

Here, the girl eyed her suggestively, plainly thinking that _smelling of the sea_ meant something vastly different than _smelling_ of the actual, thrice-damned _sea._ The Cat continued to stare at the girl and waited for her to elaborate.

"Well, he said, the captain that is, that you would need something to wear while your clothes were being cleaned. So he sent _this_."

She put the bath things next to the steaming tub and then carefully unfurled the fine clothes for the widow to inspect. The Cat couldn't make sense of them. The robe seemed… just a robe, though very fine and soft, dyed the dark purple favored among the wealthiest denizens of Braavos. The _gown,_ however…

"I'm supposed to wear _that_?" the Cat asked, incredulous. "It's not _decent_. You can see right through it!"

And it was true. The gown was a wispy white shell, no more. The material was as soft as sin, and delicate, looking more like gossamer than cloth; finer even than her dark veil. It looked as if it might dissolve beneath her fingers if she dared to touch it. _Who wore such things?_

"Well, M'lady, no one expects you to parade through the streets in it," the girl giggled (rather insolently, the widow thought). "It's for _sleeping_. It's a sleeping gown!"

Of course it was. A _sleeping_ gown. And a robe. And a bath. And a master who would return _in time to tuck an evil child in for the night._

"This cloth is so beautiful," the wench prattled as she spread the garments out on the bed. "They must have cost a small fortune. If I worked every day for a hundred years, I could never afford something like this. The captain must… _admire_ you very much."

There was something implied in her tone that the Cat did not care to explore.

"You can _have_ them," the widow told her, then added for good measure, "and I should hopehe admires me. The captain is my father." _Ha! Now it_ really _seems as if a man has grown old and slow of late,_ the Cat snickered to herself.

"Oh!" the wench gasped in surprise. "Your _father_. M'lady is very generous but I don't think I could fit into these clothes. They look as if they were made especially for you, and you are… quite thin."

It was clearly meant as in insult but the Cat paid her no mind. Tucking and rolling, leaping around with two swords, or hiding behind a lemon tree while sporting a bosom as giant as the one the wench boasted would be next to impossible. She did not envy the serving girl her very abundant _endowments_ or her lack of _thinness._ The wench may have had a pleasing form, but she was no Faceless Man.

"And will your father be returning?" the tavern girl asked, clearly calculating her chance of getting some fine clothes of her own, now that she had learned the captain was not the widow's paramour.

"He's left, going back out to sea. I suppose this was his parting gift."

"Oh," the servant said in a disappointed voice. "Well, he must love you very much to have given you such a gift."

"I'm his only child," the Cat replied for no particular reason. And in a way, it was true.

"If you'd like to disrobe now, I can help you wash your hair," the girl suggested.

"What? _No_! I mean, I can do it myself," the Cat said, aghast.

"I'm sorry, M'lady, but the captain was very specific."

_Obedience is part of a girl's training_ she heard echoing in her head. At first, she gritted her teeth but then sighed resignedly. She undressed as quickly as she could, reluctantly dropping the veil atop her piled clothing, and hopped into the hot bath, feeling the sting of the steaming water on her skin, turning it pink almost immediately. After several minutes of the chatty tavern wench scrubbing and cleaning her with the brush and soap, washing and rinsing her hair and then using the comb to relieve the mane of its tangles ( _bloody tangles. Jaqen hadn't mentioned that when he said growing her hair out would be a useful exercise)_ , the Cat began to relax and enjoy the heat of the water. Her muscles were still very sore from her master's sadistic sparring requirements, and soaking gave her some relief. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the edge of the tub, thinking that with her long day, the wine, and her draining emotional meltdown, she could just go to sleep right there in the warm water.

"Would M'lady like to dry off now?" the wench asked her, disturbing her reverie.

"No, I think I'll soak for a while," the Cat told her with a dismissive wave. "I can dry myself off if you leave the linen."

"As you wish," the girl said, rising and gathering the other bath things she had not been directed to leave. "But M'lady may like to bolt the door after me. This is a reputable inn, but with your father gone, a lady alone cannot be too careful."

"Just so," the Cat responded, eyeing her three daggers piled on the table near the bed. Still, thinking of her master's promise to return, she did as the wench suggested so that she would not be surprised by him again in the bath. After the serving girl departed, the young assassin dripped a trail of water across the floor to the door, slid the bolt into place and turned to retrace her steps to the tub. As she did, she noted that the girl had left the half-empty carafe of sweet red along with one of the goblets. They sat invitingly on the table near the window, so she changed course and poured herself another goblet of wine ( _to relax_ , she thought) before settling herself once again in the pleasantly warm water.

She tried not to think of all the things she had learned today, wanting a respite from all the _thinking_ she had already done, but it was nearly impossible for her to calm the roiling storm in her mind, so she took three long swallows of her wine, waiting for the sweet red to do for her what she could not do on her own. After a few moments had passed and she only felt minimal effects from her drink, she drained her cup in another three large gulps. The Cat laid her head back against the edge of the tub once more, exhaling slowly, and watched the faint tendrils of steam as they curled and rose from the surface of the water, vanishing into the air. She spent long moments emptying her mind of all but the patterns of the steam and then she tilted her head all the way back and stared at the ceiling.

_How strange,_ she thought as the rafters began to slowly move, curling just as the tendrils of steam had done. When she closed her eyes, she found it was not the ceiling which was lazily curling and rolling by, but _herself_. It made her feel a bit sick, like a green cabin boy might feel after his first few hours on a ship out to sea, if he had a weak stomach.

Misliking the feeling, she decided to leave her bath and dry off, thinking to settle herself in the soft bed and regain her balance. As she rose from the warm water, she nearly collapsed, so unstable was the floor beneath her feet. For half an instant, she feared the inn was crashing down on top of her and that she would be buried in an avalanche of rubble. The earth must be quaking or exploding around Braavos in some small version of the Doom of Valyria, she thought. For some reason, the very idea made her giggle.

"The Doom of Braavos," she snorted to no one. "Brought on by the _Bravos_ offending the gods with their ridiculous clothes and obnoxious arrogance!"

She laughed uproariously at her own jape, stumbling across the room to the table, thinking to pour more wine into her empty cup. As she neared the table and felt a brief, gentle breeze blow in through the open window, carrying the smells of the streets to her nose, her stomach suddenly seized and she was overcome with distress. The window was curving around a central point, rotating on an axis, but she was driven to grab at the swirling casement anyway. Once she felt the sill solidly beneath her palms, she desperately thrust her head out of the turning aperture, driven by a sudden nausea. She did so just in time to empty half of the contents of her stomach onto the street below. She heard the delayed _splat_ that came a few short seconds after she first retched, and the sound of it inspired a more violent fit of retching. She vomited up all of her wine, all of her supper, most of her lunch, and most everything she had consumed for the past two weeks. At least, that's what it felt like to her. She retched until there was nothing left to bring up and then heaved up the very air from within her, for good measure. Only then did it occur to her to suspect the wine. She had seen drunken men her whole life, some as sick as she, but she had never _experienced_ the after effects to too much wine herself. Seeing knights too deep in their cups bolt suddenly from their tables to vomit in the alley outside of a winesink was one thing but _experiencing it herself_ was something else entirely.

Giving an agonized cry (something along the lines of "Oh, _gods!"_ ),she stumbled back into the chair behind her, the one she had leapt up from when she heard Jaqen's news about Jon, and sat in it heavily. She was both miserable and wet, and the room was still spinning around her. The Cat moaned, slamming the goblet in her hand onto the table, and swore that she would never, ever, ever _, ever_ drink wine again. After the spinning of the room slowed a bit, she stood from her chair, having dripped mostly dry, and gingerly padded across the floor, in search of the linen wrap the wench had left for her. She dipped her cupped palm into the bath water and brought a handful of it to her lips, sloshing it around inside of her mouth and then spitting the soapy stuff back into the tub, thus replacing the sour taste of bile with the bitter burning of the soap on her tongue, unsure of sure which was worse. She then found the cloth and dried the remaining water droplets from her flesh and then scrubbed hard at her hair, undoing all of the tavern wench's careful labor at combing it straight.

Looking around, she noted that the tavern girl had absconded with her widow's raiment, so she reluctantly slipped on the wispy sleeping gown and then pulled the dark robe over it, noting that though it, too, was whisper-thin, at least it wasn't _sheer._ There were candles strewn about the room, lit by the pot boy when the wench had served their supper, and they had burned low. She stumbled around the room, blowing them out weakly, one by one, craving the darkness so at least she wouldn't have to watch the ceiling mock her with its slow orbit as she lay abed. Once she had extinguished the last of the candles, she fell into bed and curled herself in a ball under the soft covers, swearing to _never forget_ her vow about the wine. Soon, she was snoring peacefully, her cheek pressed against the cool of her pillow, mouth slightly agape.

She felt the wind gently tugging at her fur even as she heard it howl through the trees, sounding like one of her littermates, perhaps her lost sister, who hunted in the Nightlands now.

_The Nightlands. It was a strange idea. That came from the girl within her. Wolves had no thoughts of any life that might come after their deaths. Wolves did not dabble in belief; they traded in ferocity and clung to life, always looking toward survival. Only men tried to soften the blow dealt them by death. Only men comforted themselves with ideas such as the eternal. Wolves could ill-afford such distractions when they had to struggle just to fill their bellies._

The game in this part of the forest was getting more scarce and soon she would have to lead her cousins to new hunting grounds. Word of the presence of her large pack seemed to have spread, keeping even the men they might prey upon away. It troubled her that she would have to leave. She felt she was supposed to be here. The placed called to some ancient part of her. Not in the same way her snowy home had, to be sure. Not in the same way the white trees with the blood-red leaves had. But still… something was going to happen here and she needed to be present when it did. She could not ignore the needs of her cousins, though. She would not let them starve. She would simply have to return; to trust her instinct to tell her _when._ But on the morrow, she would move her pack.

She walked slowly out of the tree line, toward the wooden structure in which the children slept. She felt strange as she walked; unsteady on her feet. She shook her great head several times, trying to clear the haze that seemed to have descended upon her. When it did not work, she laid her ears back and whined, slinking toward the steps of the inn.

The dark knight was sitting on the steps, polishing his greatsword. He looked up when he heard her whine, appraising her with his blue eyes, and spoke to her as if she were part of his man-pack.

"Well, hello there, Lady Nymeria," he greeted courteously as he used his dirty rag to swipe at his blade in long, steady movements after he had drawn the steel across the stone block he had settled at his feet. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

She whined again then settled herself on the ground, dropping her large head upon her paws and panting. She really wasn't feeling very well at all.

"Just looking for some company, eh?" he replied genially as if she had answered. "But you have a whole pack of little cousins to keep you company. Why seek my society?"

He drew the edge of the sword slowly across the stone in long strokes; once, twice, then three times. The sound pierced the wolf’s ears and wrought from her another whine. He set about swiping at the blade again with his cloth.

"I suppose I have my pack too, even if they are all underage, half-starved orphans. But you and I, we have something in common, don't we M'lady?" he asked the wolf, halting his polishing as he regarded her golden eyes staring back at him. "We both _miss her_."

The wolf laid her ears back once again, a short growl rumbling in her throat.

"Well, it's true," the knight sniffed, "though I suppose soon I'll be too busy to think on it much."

He sounded as if he were saying it in the hopes that it would be true rather than with the conviction of actually believing what he was saying. He continued his work, watching the blade as it became more and more shiny, and resumed his conversation with the wolf without looking at her.

"Can I tell you a secret, M'lady? I had a _dream_ about her. I dreamed she came back. Right here, to this place. She came back and she looked _so_ …"

_Like a queen_ , he might have said. _A queen of winter._

His voice trailed off and he rubbed harder and harder at the steel in his lap. The wolf heard his words and somehow understood them, despite the unpleasant haze in her head. _She came back. Right here, to this place._ That seemed right. It was what had called her here, she knew suddenly. It was why she was reluctant to leave, but leave she must.

And he must, too, as he told her.

"Lem is coming back in a fortnight. He's staying with the orphans, training them, while I take my turn riding with our Lady," he told her, looking again into her furry face, sounding almost mournful. "To tell you the truth, I'm a little sorry about it, even though I'm about to go mad training these broken children to fight. They’re not so bad, I suppose, but I have no one else to talk to. Oh, begging your pardon, M'lady. I have _you_ , of course."

He laughed, likely at his own folly for speaking to a monstrously large direwolf as if she were his own closest confidant. "But it's the dream, you see. The dream, it just felt… _real_. And if I leave, and she comes back, here to this place… I guess I don't want to miss that. You can understand that, can’t you M'lady?"

The wolf whined again and it seemed to him that she understood him completely.

"But that's just stupid talk, right? The talk of a bull-headed bastard boy who never knew much about anything except a hammer and a forge," he said quietly in his self-deprecating way. His massive shoulders slumped slightly as he spoke. "I mean, it's a bloody dream, not some Red priest's prophesy or whatever. She's in _Braavos_ , if you can trust what that strange, foreign assassin told Lady Stoneheart. Why would she come back here, with things like they are?"

His sigh was wistful as he inspected his greatsword, seemingly satisfied with his work. He stood, lifting the steel and turning the point to the night sky, resting the flat of the blade against his shoulder as he descended the steps and walked into the yard toward the wolf. She rose at his approach, tongue lolling and trying to focus on the knight even though the house behind him seemed to be rocking like some great ship at sea.

They stood in the yard, staring at each other for a long moment before the knight leaned forward slightly, locking his blazing blue eyes onto hers. He spoke softly in a voice that reminded the girl of old hopes and lost innocence and barely-formed longing.

"Goodnight, M'lady."


	21. Chapter 21

"Why does a girl whine and growl in her sleep?" her master's voice said, and she could not understand why she was hearing it as she stared into Gendry's face. "Are you unwell?"

There was a trace of amusement in his tone, as if he knew bloody well that she was _unwell_ and the Cat cracked an eye to see her mentor's face, hovering above hers, peering at her in the faint moonlight streaming in through the open window of her room at the inn. _I'm at the inn in Braavos, not the one in Westeros. Another dream_ she slowly realized through the haze in her head, noting that Jaqen's shadowed face was rotating lazily above her as if it were caught in the current of a great whirlpool. _Another wolf dream. And Gendry was there._ She tried to recall the details but she could spare no further thought for the dream, so distracted was she by the rocking of her bed and the clenching of her stomach. She still felt terrible.

"How did you get in?" she asked Jaqen hoarsely, her mouth feeling like it was stuffed with wool, and particularly foul-tasting wool at that. She clumsily pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger, squinting her eyes in a vain effort to dispel the illness weighing her thoughts down like stones weighing down a sack in the bottom of a river. She might be having trouble with her concentration, but she was _certain_ she had bolted the door.

He laughed, and the jape, as far as she could determine, seemed to be why in the Seven Hells would anyone believe something as conventional as a bloody _bolted door_ could stop a Faceless Man from entering a room? She moaned as a fresh wave of nausea struck her and she closed her eyes again to try to stave it off, thinking that perhaps this was the most miserable feeling ever felt by anyone, anywhere, any time in history.

"So a widow got too deep in her cups after all," he snickered quietly, but there was at least a trace of sympathy in his voice.

"I will never drink wine again," she vowed, groaning her pain into her pillow, her misery plain in her voice.

"This is not the worst of it," her master warned her. "When you awaken in the morning, you will wish you were dead."

"I wish I was dead _now_ ," she lamented pitifully as her stomach lurched again. She rolled over and dropped her forehead against her pillow.

Jaqen sighed, overcome with a mixture of pity and the almost continuous vexation he felt with her for being so stupid. She should have known better. But then, how could she? In many ways, she was still such a child, and he hadn't been here. _To protect her from herself_ he thought.

"Here, foolish girl, sit up."

"I don't think I _can_ ," she nearly wept as her hair splayed wildly all around her head like a great, dark sunburst, her voice muffled as she pressed her face deep into the pillow, hoping to suffocate.

She heard Jaqen's damnable chuckling then felt him roll her onto her back and bend her at the waist, lifting her into a seated position. Her hand flew to her mouth and pressed tightly against her lips, a warning of the rising sickness she was experiencing and she nearly retched right there. Her body shook with her effort to control the urge to vomit.

Her master comforted her with shushing sounds as he slipped behind her, his back propped against the tall headboard. One leg was bent in front of him while the other was thrown over the side of the bed, his foot pushing against the floor. In her misery, the Cat did not wonder at his actions, but merely used every wit she had to try to convince her stomach not to betray her and empty its meager contents right there onto the coverlet.

"Lean back," he murmured, placing his fingertips on her temples, gently massaging them. The gesture was mildly soothing and so she obeyed him, pressing her back into his chest, her head hanging down, staring at her own lap as she groaned yet again. After a moment, she felt him slide his right hand from her temple to her neck, then her shoulder, and finally trailing it down her arm until he was clutching her hand in his own. This time, she was unable to control her shivering. Noting it, her master leaned in, placing his mouth against her ear, and asked her if she was cold. Her skin turned to goose-flesh, tickling her arms and neck.

"Mmm," was all she could manage, neither a confirmation nor a denial.

She felt his fingers working on her palm and then his thumb settled in the spot between her own thumb and index finger, pressing soothing circles into her flesh there. Her discomfort lessened slightly and she pulled her head up slowly, and then dropped the back of it heavily onto Jaqen's left shoulder, turning to face the window. The moonlight streaming in lit up the nearly empty wine carafe, giving it a ghostly glow and throwing its long shadow across the table. It seemed as if the thing were taunting her as it twisted and rolled around in circles, luminous and undulating. It was too much. She felt a the bile creep up her throat once again, the discomfort hitting her, quite literally, like a punch in her gut. She closed her eyes against the offending image and turned her face away from it, settling her brow and nose in the crook of her mentor's neck. Something deep inside of her, maybe that horrible voice, seemed to warn her that this was not quite _proper_ but the sound of the nagging was drowned out by her own persistent inebriation and her determination not to vomit on her master.

After another minute, his grip on her hand tightened and she was pierced with a sudden, intense pain as the Lorathi pinched that soft, sensitive part of her palm next to her thumb between his own thumb and first finger, _hard_. Her head flew up from his shoulder and she screamed, the agony nearly unbearable. It felt as if he had driven a spike through her flesh; a large, dull, _rusty_ spike. She let out a string of curses that would have curled the tavern wench's hair, _had it not already been so gorgeously curly_ (here, the Cat spared just a tiny moment to indulge her unjustified hatred of the wench and pictured the buxom girl's curls on _fire_ ), and almost blackened Jaqen's eye before she realized that her discomfort had eased greatly. She felt… alright. _Almost normal._

"What did you _do_?" she hissed at him as she glared at the silhouette of his face over her shoulder, pulling her hand out of his grip and lifting it to her mouth as the pain emanating from her palm abated. Still, she sucked on the tender spot as a child might, furrowing her brow as the haze in her head lifted somewhat.

She felt her mentor shrug against her back and then heard his voice saying, "A man will teach you. The healers in Asshai know many such tricks."

"Do all these tricks make you feel as if you've been struck by lightning?" she groused even though her hand now felt completely better and her nausea was gone.

"Most of them," he admitted nonchalantly. "Some of them make you feel worse than being struck by lightning, but only for a moment."

"Hmm," was her only response as she carefully looked around the room, testing her vision, ensuring the things that should be stable were no longer spinning and rocking. She seemed to be cured though her drowsiness remained. The fatigue was nearly overwhelming and she leaned back against Jaqen's chest once again, not entertaining any ideas of _propriety_ after all she had endured that day. She thought spitefully that Umma and her master's teasing and her stupid little head-voice could all be damned if they thought she cared one little bit about their judgment. She allowed a small sigh of contentment to escape her then.

The two of them sat that way quietly, master and apprentice, for what seemed like a long time. Jaqen's hands moved in steady lines up and down the girl's arms, warming her; soothing her. She found that her eyes were growing heavier by the minute, closing, then opening, then closing again. The rise and fall of her master's steady breathing against her back lulled her gradually and she lost her will to fight against the urging of the gentle rhythm or her own fatigue any longer. She was half asleep when her master spoke again in his low, lilting voice.

"A man has recalled that he forgot to tell a girl an important bit of news from Westeros."

"Please," she murmured softly, her voice barely audible. She didn't even bother opening her heavy lids. "I don't know if I can take any more _important bits of news_ just now."

"This bit of news, a man thinks a lovely girl will like," he coaxed, the promise contained in those words made evident by his tone. When she did not object, he continued, "It seems a snake-prince answered one of your most fervent prayers."

"Hmm? Snake... prince..." she responded, too tired to muster much more than that, even though this sounded interesting.

"Yes. There was a trial by combat involving a prince of Dorne and the Mountain That Rides. It seems Prince Oberyn Martell pierced Ser Gregor Clegane with a poisoned spear. The Mountain died after many long days of screaming and unimaginable agony despite a disgraced maester's constant ministrations."

Her eyes flew open. She bolted upright in the bed and spun around, kneeling on the mattress before her master, leaning eagerly toward him. She was suddenly wide awake.

" _Ser Gregor_?" she breathed, her wide eyes shining in the moonlight.

"Is no more," Jaqen completed her sentence, confirming the legitimacy of the hope so apparent in her voice.

She might have chosen a disembowelment, or perhaps drawing and quartering with four fat, slow, lazy donkeys in place of fast stallions, but she was only marginally disappointed that it had been poison. That it was a _slow_ and _painful_ poison cheered her considerably and that Ser Gregor must have been aware he was dying for days and days with no power to change his fate was... Well, there were no words for what that was.

"Prince Oberyn…" she mused. She might just have a new hero.

"Sadly, the Red Viper was killed in their fight, but not before he had done his damage."

_Dead? Oh, well. Maybe she would write a song about him. Well, that would never happen. Maybe she would pay a singer to write a song about him. Or, force a singer to write a song about him at sword point…_

He could only see her faintly in the moonlight, but the same shining joy he had detected when he told her about her mother punishing scores of Freys was illustrated in her features, and even in the dim light, she was exquisite; almost otherworldly. He laid his head back against the headboard, his hooded eyes turned on the girl, and drank her rapture in for a minute before he bade her turn back around and go to sleep. The Cat insisted that she was too excited to sleep after such news.

"How am I supposed to sleep _now?_ " she demanded, not unkindly. He could hear the smile in her voice.

"Should a man sing you a lullaby?" he teased, grasping her shoulders and turning her around, drawing the coverlet over her legs and pressing her back against him once again.

She snorted her derision, declaring that even when she _was_ of an age where a lullaby might have soothed her, she had hated them, preferring instead to drift off to sleep while listening to Old Nan's tales of the great ice spiders and white walkers and other terrors beyond the wall. But she relaxed against him nonetheless.

"It is bedtime stories a lovely girl prefers, then?" her mentor mused. "Very well, a man lives to serve. Though he is no _Old Nan,_ a man has a most delightful tale for his apprentice."

She almost told him that she had heard enough of his _delightful tales_ to last her until the next red comet, but she wondered what he was playing at, and so said nothing. He continued talking, his hushed voice mesmerizing her as his hands gathered her long hair, pulling it from the space between their bodies and tossing it over her one shoulder. This laid one side of her neck bare. She felt him place his thumb behind her exposed ear as his fingers gently wrapped themselves under her jaw and more than halfway around her neck. The thumb began kneading the spot it touched and she felt unaccountably relaxed, all at once. She resolved that she _really_ must learn more about his time with the healers in Asshai.

"There was once a girl, an evil child, really, who had a most wise master," he began in his softly purring way, ignoring the growl whose rumble he could feel in the Cat's throat, beneath his fingers. "This girl loved hearing tales of her master's exploits and once asked if her most beloved master had killed anyone during his travels through the Riverlands."

"Yes, and you said _no one who did not need killing_ ," she recalled, wondering where this was going.

"Just so. It happens that when this master was visiting Riverlands, he spent many days and nights riding with his temporary brothers, a group that pledged loyalty to the small folk of the land and were led by a fearsome Lady."

"I've heard this tale before," the girl told him, sighing her disinterest.

"An ungrateful girl has only heard _part_ of the tale," Jaqen chided. "Now, where were we? Ah, yes... One day, as he and the Lady's men were riding a few leagues from Riverrun, this wise and most _patient_ master crossed paths with a small party of men from Maidenpool. They claimed to be envoys on their way to Riverrun, now held by a contemptible joint force of Lannisters and Freys. The small band from Maidenpool was only four men strong and therefore was easily waylaid by Lady Stoneheart's men. _And_ the evil child's master. Two of the envoys were taken before the Lady for judgment."

"And the other two, were they killed when you ambushed them?" she guessed.

"No," her master replied. "Those two, the master judged for himself. Their names were of great interest to him, as he had long heard them and felt almost as if he _knew_ them, so famous were they."

The girl’s interest was piqued. Her mind raced for the answer—some famous men; men with deeds known far and wide, most likely. A pair of great knights? Or perhaps rich lords? A Lannister ally, and ally to the crown, it had to be, just based on the point of origin and the destination. But _who_? If Jaqen knew their names, she surely did to. Jaime Lannister? That would make sense. Or perhaps Ramsay Bolton? Less plausible; he was holed up in the North still, most like. Perhaps a traitorous Karstark? But none of them were particularly famous. At least, all the well-known Karstarks were dead. Kevan Lannister? One of the surviving Freys? Walder Frey would be much too old for such a treacherous cross-country ride, even if the decrepit wretch _was_ still alive. It couldn't have been anyone from the royal household, although _Tyrion_ Lannister had not been heard from in quite some time...

"A girl asked a man if he brought her anything back from his trip," he said, seeming to change course in his story. "A gift for his apprentice."

She thought of the long, wooden case she had seen her master carrying from the ship to the Armorers District and then replied, "And you said you didn't."

"No, foolish child. A man said he had no gift for _no one,"_ he reminded her and then, drawing his lips near to her ear, he whispered, "However, there _is_ a gift for _Arya Stark_."

She sucked in her breath, unsure of how she should react. Jaqen almost never used her real name and when he did, it was typically to tell her to stop thinking of herself that way. Was this some sort of test? Was she supposed to object, saying Arya Stark was dead and he could just keep his gift since it wasn't for _no one?_ The problem was, Arya Stark _wasn't_ dead. Changed, yes. Evolved, even. But not _dead._ Not quite.

And there was also another problem: she really, really, _really_ wanted to know what her master had brought back for her.

Jaqen pushed her back off of his chest, allowing himself room to ease his body from the mattress. His apprentice watched his dark form move away from her with a tiny grain of… _regret_? She fell back onto her pillow and closed her heavy lids, trying to understand what her master was telling her. She was so lost in her own thoughts that she didn't register that Jaqen was lighting a candle ( _how?_ ) until the bright flame was assaulting her eyes, blinding her momentarily.

"What in the Seven…" she started to sputter, sitting up once again. At first, she saw nothing but the light, but as her eyes adjusted, she noted that her master was standing near the window, having placed the lit candle on the table. The bloody wine and goblet had been removed ( _where?_ ) and in their place was a box.

"Where did that come from?" she asked stupidly, blinking to be sure it wasn't some trick of the wine or the dancing shadows thrown by the flickering candle.

Jaqen said nothing, reclining against the window, nearly sitting in it, his one hand hooked to his sword belt by the thumb, his other hand giving a flourishing gesture from her reclining form to the box, indicating that it was for her to open. Apprehensively, she threw her legs over the side of the bed and stood, grateful that she felt steady on her feet. She approached the table slowly, shivering more with anticipation than with cold, though she noted almost unconsciously that the thin material of the gown and robe given to her by her _father_ hardly provided any protection against the night breeze drifting in through the window, stirring her master's hair as he stood in its path.

As she reached the table, her heart pounded with excitement and a touch of fear. She studied the chest settled upon the table, running her hands over the polished wood and feeling its contours. It was a small box, not the much larger one she had spied her mentor carrying to Meerios Dinast's armory. This box was less than a foot long, and only half again as deep. A small treasure chest. She thought it looked like it might hold gold or jewels and scowled. She hoped her master had not brought her some pretty trinket. Certainly, he knew her better than _that._ No, Jaqen was never a fool. Throwing jewels around the Cat's neck would be no more sensible than attempting to place a wig upon a wolf's head. It did not improve the wolf in any way, and it was like to get a man's hand torn off. Whatever was in this box, be it truly a gift or something meant to teach her an elaborate lesson about the importance of being _no one,_ she was certain it would not be some useless thing.

Under his expectant gaze, she eagerly opened the hinged lid of the small chest. Inside were two objects, of similar size, texture and color. Oblong, like eggs, but larger than any egg she had seen, and the shape not quite as regular. The things had a sort of brownish-gray cast and a rough texture, with surfaces almost dusty-appearing. She reached in and pulled one out, feeling its weight, which was surprisingly light. Not solid, then. She cocked her head and brought the object closer to her eye, turning it over in the dim light thrown by the candle and seeing the lines and veins trailing around it, leading to its apex. Her eyes widened and she exclaimed in surprise.

"A _heart!_ "

"Two hearts," he corrected.

"But… _what?_ " she stuttered in confusion, grabbing the other desiccated organ out of the box so that both of her hands were now clutching the things. " _Or… who?"_

Her master looked at her as a doting father looks at his only child, hoping the present he has given the child for his nameday pleases him greatly. Satisfied that she would appreciate his gift once it was explained, he said in an almost purring voice, "This is all that remains of the men named Dunsen and Raff the Sweetling."

Her mouth slowly opened as she turned her face to his. The candlelight danced off of her pale cheek and he watched her chest heaving through the delicate cloth of her robe and gown. Her wide eyes were unblinking.

Some girls go weak-kneed with gifts, weeping over jewels and expensive bolts of cloth with which they would have ridiculous gowns made. Myrish lace had been a particularly popular gift among the silliest of the ladies in King's Landing during her sojourn there. She had once seen a kitchen girl weep over a bundle of fresh-picked wildflowers given her by a handsome stable boy at Winterfell. But _this_ gift… This gift was beyond all compare. In her lifetime, she had been given dolls, dresses, a fine saddle, and ribbons for her hair (which she promptly used to weave a net in which to trap baby Rickon when they played at being Night's Watch and wildlings). But none of those things could touch the very core of her the way _this_ did, this gift of _justice;_ this gift of _death._

She felt a charge she couldn't put words to pulsing from deep within her, buzzing through her veins, causing a pleasantly painful tingling in her fingers and toes. Standing there clutching the two hearts to her purple-robed breast, staring adoringly into Jaqen's face, she felt the undeniable certainty that at this moment, in this instant in her life, she had finally understood the depth of her master's devotion to her. She understood that this devotion was a thing of flawless beauty. The only gift she had _ever_ received that could remotely compare to this was Needle, and it was cherished for the exact same reason: the giver had understood her completely and had found a token to express that understanding _perfectly_.

"Jaqen," she whispered, "This is… I…"

"A man knows, lovely girl."

" _Thank you_ ," she breathed, not even disgruntled that she would now be unable to carry out her long-dreamed of retribution herself. She had confidence that her master would have taken care of her enemies most… _fittingly_. And besides, she still had _Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, and Queen Cersei._

Jaqen, seeming to read her thoughts (as ever), left his perch in the window and placed his hands upon her shoulders, telling her, "Do not worry, lovely girl, you may have your chance yet."

She shook her head to show him she was not bothered and then smiling, told him wildly, "I could almost _kiss_ you!"

"A man would not object," he said, smirking at her as she moved the dry organs into her one hand. She raised herself up on her toes, placing her other cool hand against his left cheek as she lightly kissed the right. He chuckled at that then told her, "Off to bed! A girl has two swords she will have to spar with in the morning and fatigue will be no excuse!"

He watched her replace the hearts into their case reverently and then fly to her bed, hopping onto the mattress with the irrepressible exuberance of youth. She hid herself under the coverlet with the air of a giddy maid who has been crowned the queen of love and beauty, although perhaps that was not the most appropriate analogy, as in some accounts he had heard, this crowning had not always been the lighthearted thing it ought to have been. It struck him as strange that he should feel sad about that, considering those about whom the story was told were dead and gone and strangers to him, anyway. But as he leaned back against the seat of the window sill, resting there, he felt a sense of melancholy.

He brushed away the emotion with the easy manner of an experienced Faceless Man and then teased his apprentice for good measure.

"Sleep well," he told her gently, but then added, " _M'lady."_

She sat upright and gave him a shocked look. It was _most_ satisfying for him. He had already warned her that she talked in her sleep. He would have to find something to do about that. That she _had_ the wolf dreams, he accepted. That _others_ might come to know about them was another thing altogether. Her master worried that already, the principal elder suspected what she was doing and Jaqen knew that there was no _talent_ that his devout brother would not exploit in the name of the Many-Faced god. He resolved to find something to at least mask her… condition. Hopefully, this would save her from becoming, once again, nothing more than a pawn in some larger game, albeit a deadly, elegant, very _special_ pawn.

After the lovely girl's shock had settled into glaring and her glaring had settled into eye-rolling, and her eye-rolling had finally been masked by her drooping eyelids, she laid her head upon the soft pillows and settled back into the slumber he had earlier disturbed. This time, it seemed much more peaceful. No wolf dreams, then. Those counted almost as sparring, so much thrashing and talking and action did they involve at times.

As he watched her drift off to sleep, he cast his mind back to his first sighting of her through the bars of a rolling cage in which he had placed himself for the purposes of yet another mission for the order. He had known almost instantly that she was special. There was something in those storm-grey eyes; something in the way she refused to back down, even when threatened by those capable of crushing her with one hand. The fearlessness was remarkable, but it was more than that. There was a belief in her, a true and utter belief that she would persevere and the belief itself became a sort of power. When she saved him from the Red god, it had only solidified the plans that had already been half-formed, snaking and winding through his mind on the King's Road as he moved northward with the Night's Watch..

Most acolytes come to enter the service of the Many-Faced god through doorways born of fear and folly or abandonment and desperation. His own path to the ebony and weirwood doors had been guided by great loss and sorrow. The House accepted all those who showed the will and strength to do what was asked. But _Arya_ was different. In Arya, Jaqen had seen a rare chance; a chance to _choose_. He could _sense_ in her the potential to be great. The courage and the strength she possessed far exceeded that which any girl of her age should command. And there was something _else_ ; something undefinable about her. He had come to believe it was the thing he half-jokingly referred to as the magic of the old gods in her blood. But whatever it was, it sang out to him the same way he believed her blood sang out to the steel of her knives and her dreams sang out to her wolf. Jaqen had seen this girl, playing at being a boy, and had _known_ _instantly_ her secret and her true identity and her very _destiny—_ the destiny of a highborn daughter of a great house of the Seven Kingdoms—and he had willfully sought to reshape it. He _chose_ her and he tempted her with his iron coin, ignoring what was _meant_ to be; not caring what her fate had already mapped for her.

He had resolved that it would be _his_ design that directed her life.

Her master knew that back in Westeros, some shriveled septa or wizened maester would have delighted in _refining_ his lovely girl, smoothing all of her rough edges and drilling into her all the meaningless courtesies spewed mindlessly from ten thousand ordinary mouths. They would pin her up in corseted gowns, curbing her very breath, and drain her perfect wildness out of her as one would bleed a sickly man. Jaqen, however, delighted in those rough edges and was enraptured to discover the wildness within her. He felt honor-bound to guide her ability to _use it_ , not smoothing it out of existence but shaping it into something perhaps less rough but much more beautiful; much more useful.

And much more _dangerous_.

He had snatched a lovely girl from the clutches of Westerosi ambition and exploitation, and now he only hoped he hadn't driven her back to the crushing jaws of that perilous world with all that he had told her that day. She was not ready for that, no matter how foolishly brave she felt, and neither was he. It had pained him to leave her the first time, with only an iron coin as a guide. He had loathed the idea of leaving her unprotected in the wilderness of that barbaric land but he also knew she had the ability to survive. She had _proven_ it countless times before, as a mere child. But the chance that some errant arrow or starving wolf or malicious outlaw might keep her from her destiny, the destiny _he_ had designed, gnawed at him as he wiped his sword on her shift in a crude and improvised initiation into the brotherhood of death, changed his face, and left her clutching his coin while wearing her gown of blood.

Every night after that, until he had seen his lovely girl again, while Arya Stark whispered her list of names to the darkness and winds and uncaring gods, he said his own prayer to _his_ god. A girl's list was long, but his was short, comprised of one name only; one name and a fervent wish.

"Arya Stark," he had prayed each night for a year. "Bring her to me."

This night, as Jaqen watched her sleep and then slipped soundlessly out of the room and into the streets of Braavos, his prayer was different. Different, but the same.

"Arya Stark," he prayed as he walked briskly to the House of Black and White. "Do not take her from me."


	22. Chapter 22

The Cat, not wishing to disturb those who might be seeking solace within the temple, climbed the high wall around the courtyard garden. She dropped lightly into a crouch on the other side, landing behind a fig tree, intending to use the garden entrance near Umma’s kitchen rather than entering the place through the great ebony and weirwood doors. She stood, straightening her dark dress. She placed her hands atop her head and felt that her wispy veil had fluttered up during her swift descent and arranged itself in a double sheet trailing down the back of her braided hair. Though she really needn’t have bothered within the walls of the garden, the girl nonetheless pulled the delicate material back over her face. She looked up, meaning to take a step out from behind the trees and onto the dark stone path that led to the back of the House of Black and White so that she might hurry to her cell and change into clothes more fit for sparring ( _a girl has two swords she will have to spar with in the morning_ , she heard Jaqen’s voice coo in her head) but her path was blocked by the Kindly Man.

The girl drew up short but managed to swallow down her surprise and give the principal elder a passive look. She had no doubt he could read her face, veil or no veil, and she wished to give him no cause for criticism. _Well, no more cause than clambering over the courtyard wall dressed as a widow,_ she thought to herself.

_Stillness,_ her little voice whispered as the Cat awaited the elder’s inevitable comment. _Calm as still water._

The sun had risen a mere half-hour earlier and the soft light slanted in over the east wall of the courtyard, illuminating the Kindly Man's soft grey hair from behind, making it appear as if he wore a halo of light and causing her to squint slightly as she looked at him. He spoke in his measured way, his quiet voice only just louder than the splashing water of the courtyard fountain. The girl leaned forward as he spoke, to better hear him.

"Our widow has returned," the principal elder observed mildly. "What three new things did you learn while you were away?"

She looked at him through her veil and met his eyes, determined to read them as best she could while she related her newfound knowledge. Arya had learned far more than three new things, but some of them, she was not willing to share with the Kindly Man. She chose her words carefully.

"I learned that Faceless Men can enter rooms without regard to the strength of the bolt on the door."

"That is a good thing to know," he remarked, the cadence of his voice as gentle as a song. He awaited her next revelation with his characteristic patience.

"I learned that sweet red wine from the Reach is more deadly than half of the poisons the waif keeps in her cupboards," she continued wryly.

A small smile played on the Kindly Man's lips and his eyes travelled to the place where her hands were clasped together, held against her belly, and examined the small, rounded bruise on her right hand, near the base of her thumb.

"This, I think, you have learned from experience rather than observation,” the man replied, lifting his eyebrows as the acolyte traced the path of his gaze and noticed, for the first time, the deep purple mark in the shape of her master's thumb which had bloomed accusingly on her white flesh ( _as purple as the fine robe a captain had gifted to a widow)_. “If only all poisons had such a convenient antidote.”

Her face colored beneath her veil but she quickly added her third thing in order to leave this particular subject behind.

"I learned a Faceless Man with a fine longsword travels now to White Harbor aboard a ship."

The smile left the Kindly Man's face and for a fleeting instant, his gaze upon her face became somewhat less _kindly_. The change was so brief, however, that the Cat began to believe she had only imagined it. When she narrowed her eyes to study him more intently through her misty shroud, she noted that his expression now only radiated his typical peaceful demeanor.

"Hmmm," the elder responded, not commenting further on the girl’s information. Completely changing the course of their conversation, the Kindly Man told her, "You should go quickly to the small dining hall and break your fast before your brothers consume everything. I understand your master expects you in the training room this morning and you have also to help the cook in the kitchen before the midday meal."

She bobbed her head quickly in acknowledgement, waiting until he turned from her and continued his leisurely stroll through the garden before she picked up her skirts and scampered down the path and through the door into the rear of the temple. Within minutes, she had shed the newly cleaned widow's raiment and dressed herself in her quilted doublet (it would provide at least _some_ protection from the flat of her master's blade), her soft, loose breeches and her high leather boots, dagger tucked safely inside. She entered the small dining hall like a whirlwind, patting Loric's head good-naturedly and snatching some of the warm bread from the platter before him. The Cat hungrily consumed it in four large bites. Her lively mood was uncharacteristic and it set the few of her brothers present to whispering but Loric, sweetly and pitiably guileless, simply asked her why she was so happy.

"Happy?" she asked, rolling the word around in her mouth, seeing how it felt. "Hmm. I guess I am happy. I hadn't thought of it."

"Yes, but _why?_ "

She dropped into the chair next to the young acolyte and leaned her face very near his, her grey eyes lighting up and her hushed voice hinting at a great intrigue she was choosing to share with him.

"I received a very fine gift," she told him conspiratorially.

They boy's eyes widened and he asked her, "Is it worth a lot of gold?"

"This gift is _priceless_ ," the Cat answered, but would say no more, no matter how much he begged. She ruffled his hair then, grinning at him and remembering how Jon had done very much the same thing to her a lifetime ago. This made her sigh wistfully but she would not allow the longing she felt when she thought of her brother to fully form before she packed it away, consigning it to that space where she kept all of the things she did not wish to feel (shut away from all consideration, lest sadness and hurt consume her).

Enjoying the feel of breeches and the supple leather boots against her legs after spending so much time in a dress, she practically bounced to the training room, glad to note that her soreness was now at a manageable level. Jaqen met her there and directed her to grab her swords and show him her stance. She did so, standing in her side face, water dancer's position, only this time, instead of her right arm being curved above her head for balance, she had it braced low against her side. Her elbow was at her hip, the smaller of her blades gripped in that hand, pointing along the line dictated by her gaze, a menacing accomplice of her larger weapon.

Her master walked a slow circle around her, his thumb hooked in his sword belt. He looked her up and down, tapping her lower back briskly with the flat of his sword in order to tell her to straighten it further and then pushing her right shoulder slightly back and allowing her a moment to feel the difference it made in the weight of her smaller blade. He then nodded his approval and moved opposite her, sliding into his own stance and standing at the ready before he narrowed his eyes and spoke his simple command.

"Begin."

The Lorathi laid back a bit, taking a slow, leisurely approach with her today. He wanted to see how she would attack, she supposed, rather than how well she could evade and defend. At first, she remained tentative, but when he continued to hold back, she finally went on the attack. She found she had much more control in her cuts if she used the swords together, holding the hilts so close they touched, and was still obviously much more comfortable with the lighter blade but was as least attempting to attack with the bastard sword. A few times, she believed she would land a solid blow but at the last second, she was thwarted crisply by one of her mentor's quick parries. Several times, she was forced to retrieve her _Bravos_ blade from the floor as she focused too much attention on the heavier steel and did not properly guard her small sword.

A few times, she came close to throwing the bastard blade in the corner so she could aggressively chase her master around the room with her preferred weapon, but she bit back her frustration and continued sparring with both blades, as her master insisted she do. The strain of the heavy steel on her left arm became apparent as they continued sparring and eventually, her strength flagged noticeably. Jaqen could read the vexation on her face and attempted to assure her.

"A girl should not worry. The strength will come, as long as you keep practicing. But a girl's arm is not the only problem."

Breathing heavily, hands pressed against her thighs as she bent over to feel the stretch of her back, she looked up at him, her expression quizzical. Seeing she did not comprehend his meaning, he bade her to return her swords to their racks as he did the same. Once this task was completed, he approached her and directed her to stand up straight. She did as her master instructed then watched with mild alarm as he balled up his fist and appeared to be aiming to punch her gut.

Jaqen stood to her side and placed his clenched fist firmly in the center of her belly, pressing into her even as his other hand supported her lower back and prevented her retreat from the pressure he was creating.

"This is where your strength should flow from, lovely girl," he purred, pressing deeper for emphasis. She said nothing but concentrated on the feeling of his fist pressing against her and thought about what it might mean to get strength from her gut. He moved to stand in front of her then, his hands settling around her arms, holding her biceps in his crushing grasp. She winced a little, feeling the aching of the muscles not yet resolved from the first day he made her spar with that damnably heavy blade.

"This is not where the strength comes from," he told her, digging his strong fingers into the muscle beneath them. "We are building strength here, to be sure, but you will never wield that sword properly unless you _feel it_ in your gut."

He peered at her, gauging her understanding, and seemed satisfied that she had interpreted his meaning. Dropping his hands away from her, he continued his lesson.

"There is an intelligence to swordplay," he acknowledged, "and a man with wits will always have the advantage, all other things being equal. But a man cannot fight effectively with wits alone."

The Cat listened closely, drinking in her master's wisdom. Whenever Jaqen spoke to her like this, he always said something valuable. The look on her face was so earnest, he found it very gratifying but frustrating at the same time. If only he could get her to listen to _all_ of his advice with such interest...

He paused, dropping onto the wooden bench as she stood before him. He regarded her keenly through narrowed eyes before continuing in his purring way, the common tongue marked by his Lorathi accent.

" _Instinct_ , lovely girl. A man who has good instincts coupled with wits cannot be bested. Instinct cannot be taught, but where it is found, it can be _refined._ It can be _perfected_."

"If it can't be taught, how can I hope to improve?" the girl asked, her tone discouraged.

"Foolish girl, you _have_ all the instinct you could ever require. Your task is to learn to _heed_ it," her master announced. "And a man's task is to hone it; to shape it into a weapon as powerful as a girl’s blade. If you learn this lesson well, you will be _invincible_ in combat."

_Invincible_. She liked the way that sounded. A broad smile appeared on her face as she wiped the sweat from her brow with the padded sleeve of her doublet. Her mentor watched her quietly, appraising that grin of hers, thinking of all the different expressions he had seen on that flushed face in the last day alone. _So many iterations of one lovely girl,_ he mused to himself. _They must all be ready, when the time comes. None may fail, or all is lost._

"What are you thinking, Jaqen?" the Cat asked him, noticing the seriousness that had descended upon his face and furrowed his brow. Smoothing his features, he turned his bronze eyes to her, not quite having the words he needed to impress upon her the importance of her obedience in the task to come. He had already obtained her promise, (" _I will do my duty, whatever is asked,"_ she had sworn to him), but still, he did not rest easy. For now, though, it would have to be enough. He would find a way to discuss this with her soon, and emphasize that he would expect her to fulfill her vow to him, but for now, he chuckled at her question, and brushed off his concern.

"A man was wondering what became of a Cat's gifts," the Lorathi lied smoothly, shrugging his shoulders.

Her expression was as close to coquettish as he had ever seen when she answered in a delighted tone, "Raff and Dunsen are resting comfortably, never fear. They are in a safe place."

"And what of a girl's _other_ gifts?" her master purred, watching her face change from coquettish to sour in an instant. "A man had thought a girl might appreciate having something other than a wet linen wrap to wear the next time she manages to soak her clothes while bathing."

"I left them for the tavern wench you flirted with so shamelessly," she spat, puckering her face when he laughed loudly at that. The bloody Lorathi even went so far as to _slap his knee_! Not waiting for his laughter to die away, she turned on her heel and stalked toward the door, throwing her excuse casually over her shoulder as he continued to snort. "I'm expected by Umma."

* * *

 

Umma gave the Cat a hard look when she entered the kitchen. As the girl had not arrived late and was, in fact, even a bit early for her kitchen duties, she was unsure what she had done to warrant such scrutiny. When it continued for an uncomfortably long time, she finally turned to the cook and demanded to know what she meant by staring at her so brazenly.

Umma shrugged, turning back to her turnips and said, "I was just making sure you weren't wasting away. When you don't show up to eat my midday meal _or_ my supper and barely touch my breakfast, I am naturally going to worry!"

At first, the Cat felt touched, reading the cook's remarks as concern, but when she said, "Oh, don't worry, I ate my meals at an inn!" the look on Umma's face changed not to relief but to accusation.

"An _inn_ , was it? And why, pray tell, were _you_ at an inn?"

"Well," the girl started but then wasn't sure what she could say that wouldn't betray Jaqen's confidence or that wouldn't sound… _bad_. She finally settled on, "It was part of my training!"

The cook's laugh announced her disbelief and she muttered something under her breath about that sort of training being more appropriate for an apprentice of a pleasure house in Lys than for an assassin's apprentice. The Cat tried to ignore her, knowing that Umma felt a motherly affection for her, in her way, and just wanted the best for her. Also, the cook hated when food went to waste and hated even _more_ any suggestion that her cooking was not the best in all of Braavos.

The turnips were for a vegetable broth that would accompany a crabmeat and cheese pie that was one of the Cat's favorites. Of all the places in the world she could have wandered, she found herself grateful that it was Braavos the iron coin had brought her to, for she found the dishes created from the bounty of the surrounding waters to be some of the best food she had ever tasted.

They worked the rest of the time in silence but as the meal was completed and the Cat dipped her hands into a pail of clean water and then wiped them on a rag to dry them, the cook turned to her and finally spoke.

"Be careful, child," Umma said. "These men… They all have their own reasons for the things they do. You…"

The woman's voice trailed off and she lifted one hand to the girl's face, holding it there as she looked almost sad.

"What is it, Umma?" the girl prodded her gently, wondering what had brought this warning on.

The cook just shook her head, patting the girl on her arm in an affectionate gesture and said simply, "Mind yourself."

As the Cat left the kitchen, the cook's words had a strange effect on her. It seemed like lately everywhere she went, _someone_ was warning her about _something_. What was she to make of it all? Well, at least she felt like Umma's concerns were unfounded. Jaqen hadn't taken her to the inn for any nefarious purpose, despite all her teasing about the captain having sinister reasons for offering a widow a cup of wine. It was not obvious to her at the time, but she understood now that with everything her master needed to tell her, and the nature of much of the news, he could not have told her over honeyed chicken in a tavern or over crossed blades in the training room or while she watched the waif's unaccountably abundant bubbles die in her bath. He could not have done other than he did. He did not secret her upstairs in front of the tavern's patrons as a jape, intending to make her feel ashamed and he did not press the wine into her hand so that she would commit an indiscretion that he could hang over her head later (though she nearly had, anyway). He did those things because doing them allowed her to react the way she needed to react as she learned the things he was obligated to tell her. She recognized that all he had done was with a thought for her comfort and she shook her head, nearly ashamed at her lack of appreciation for her master.

The girl drifted into the small dining hall which was slowly filling up with her hungry brothers, and saw that Jaqen was not among the diners. She supposed he had some other business to tend to, something only masters need concern themselves with, and then noted that the rat-faced boy walked in, carrying the great tureen of vegetable broth.

_Wonderful_ , she thought with irritation, he's _serving. I'll have to watch him the whole time to be sure he doesn't spit in my food_.

Loric entered the room just then and, seeing the Cat, his face lit up as he bounded over to take the place next to her.

"I heard the Lorathi telling the principal elder that he's training you to fight with _two_ swords," the boy said by way of greeting, his breathless voice full of reverence.

The Cat frowned at that. Why were they discussing her? She thought about it a minute longer and then decided there wasn't anything _wrong_ with them discussing her. The masters surely kept the elders informed of the progress of the acolytes, but still, it made her feel funny to know they were discussing _her_.

"That right?" the girl asked rhetorically, feigning boredom.

"Yes!" he declared, not reading her cue. "The Lorathi said he thought if he was given enough time, you would be capable of slaying a dozen trained knights by yourself. All at _once_!"

That surprised her. She had assumed her mentor's enticement of being able to defeat a _roomful_ of men had been an exaggeration; a simple reason for her to pick up the bastard sword without complaint. She tried to place herself in that scenario, picturing herself amid a room of hostile knights, armored, carrying heavy blades, she at their center with her bastard sword and _Bravos_ blade and boiled leather. Each time she envisioned it, she managed to pile up about a half-dozen bodies before one of the knights put his steel through her heart. She _knew_ it must be possible for _some_ people to accomplish what her master was claiming she would be able to do—she had seen her old dancing master dispatch half a dozen armed men with only a wooden stick, after all, but he was _Syrio Forel,_ the first sword of Braavos _,_ while she was... no one. She did not like to call up this particular memory of Syrio, as magnificent as he had been in that moment, because it inevitably led to her imagining what must have happened to him once Ser Meryn lowered his visor and entered the fray in his heavy plate. She shook off the images, diving into the steaming crab pie that had just been placed in front of her. After taking two bites, she imagined she saw a smirk on the rat-faced boy's face and cursed to herself. Loric had distracted her and she had forgotten to watch the other Westerosi among them. She glared at the boy and his smirk melted away. Satisfied, she returned to her food and ate her fill.

* * *

 

Her day was her own after her meal and so she returned to the courtyard where she had met the Kindly Man that morning. The sun was high but the shade provided respite from the pressing heat. She walked first to the fountain and impulsively removed her boots and waded in it, something she had often thought seemed a good idea but had never witnessed anyone else attempting. The pool was not deep enough to swim, but she hopped out and leaning her chest across the low wall of the fountain's edge, she submerged her head in the cool waters, imagining the chill was the Northern wind against her cheeks. When she could hold her breath no longer, she drew back quickly, throwing an arc of water droplets high into the air then turned to watch them rain down on the dark stones of the path. She felt refreshed and thought to thank Umma for her earlier concern with some lemons from one of the trees in the garden. The highest fruits seemed the most likely to be ripe(of course), so she leaned her boots against the wall behind one of the trees and began to climb up the sturdy trunk, using the dark marble bench beneath it as a step to gain purchase against the bark. When she had climbed as high as she safely could, suspecting the highest branches were not strong enough to support her weight, she stretched up on her toes and balanced on a thin branch, quite like a cat. She plucked three perfect lemons, tucking them in her doublet. From her vantage point, she could not see much of the garden because the foliage of the tree was quite thick, but it seemed to her that she could hear voices.

_Damn it all_ , she thought, _if I don't leap down right now and announce myself, I'll be accused of eavesdropping on conversations not meant for my ears. Again._

She prepared to do just that when she realized she recognized the voices. Once again, the Kindly Man and her master were strolling through the gardens, having a hushed conversation. She was faced with a choice and quickly decided she could tolerate being accused of suffering from an excess of curiosity but didn't know if she could tolerate not knowing what they were discussing. She stilled herself and listened intently.

"…a most useful exercise," her master was saying. "A man recalls that when he himself was a young acolyte, his master instructed him much in the same way."

"Be that as it may," the Kindly Man retorted, "there was a most _unfortunate_ consequence."

"But this is exactly why a man must be kept _informed_. This could all have been avoided if a man's brother had only…"

"Certainly," the Kindly Man cut him off, his voice growing louder to the Cat's ear. They must be very near now, though she still could not see them. "But you have your duties, and they keep you most _engaged_. I sometimes must make these decisions quickly. It is my duty to decide when and where to move the pieces so that our plans will have the utmost chance of success. That does not always allow me time to keep _you_ informed of every tiny decision as they happen."

"Is this a _tiny_ decision?" Jaqen queried, sounding doubtful. The Cat's heart nearly stopped. The men had moved into view and they were almost directly below her. She held her breath, a slow terror crawling up her back as she watched the Kindly Man take a seat on the very same bench she had used to boost herself into the tree!

The Kindly Man gave her master a look but she could not see it from her position looking down on the top of his head. She commanded every muscle in her body to be still, frozen, and made her breaths shallow and silent, willing the men to _just not look up._ She admonished herself to remember Syrio's lessons.

_Quiet as a shadow._

"You do not understand all that is at stake, brother," the Kindly Man told Jaqen, almost coldly.

"So a man's brother keeps saying. Perhaps if you explained it…"

The Kindly Man held up his hand to stop her master from speaking.

"You need not trouble yourself, brother," the Kindly Man said, his voice not sounding exceedingly _kind_ to the Cat's ear. "These matters are well in hand."

Ignoring the warning in the principal elder's manner and tone, the Lorathi persisted, observing, "It seems to a man that his brother has already determined the outcome of her trial. A man believes she will do what is required of her and this will eliminate the need for all of these alternate plans."

_Do what is required?_ the girl puzzled. _This must be what he meant yesterday, when he said I needed to do whatever it was I was asked._

"Of course, of course," the Kindly Man said patronizingly. "I have faith just the same as you do, brother, but in my position, I can ill afford to leave the order unprepared for _any_ outcome, no matter how unlikely it may seem. To _both_ of us."

Jaqen nodded his understanding, seeming to relax. He turned and sat next to his brother on the bench, hiding his countenance from the Cat. Now, she could just see the tops of both men's heads and shoulders, their thighs jutting forth from the seat.

"I must warn you, though," the principal elder added softly, "this thing will not be easy. I know you will have your apprentice as ready as can reasonably be expected, but still, you should prepare yourself for failure. Just in case."

Her master turned to face the elder, saying, "A man would know what is to be expected from the girl."

The Kindly Man chuckled, shaking his head, replying, "Come now, brother. That's hardly proper. Tell me, did _your_ master know what would be required of _you_ before you entered the final trial?"

"A man does not know. Did you, master?"

The principal elder clapped Jaqen fondly on his shoulder, and told him, "Worry is an offense to the Many-Faced god. Relieve your mind, brother. All will be well, I promise you. Still, maybe it would have been easier for you if I had just sent you to Pentos..."

"No, you were right to allow a man to stay. No disrespect was meant, brother. I strive only to serve."

"I know you do. Truly, I do," the elder replied sincerely, then paused, seeming to consider something. "Brother, why do you allow the girl to call you _Jaqen_?"

The Cat's mentor paused only slightly before he answered, "A man must be called something. It is a matter of simplicity. Merely a convenience." As he spoke, he shrugged casually and though girl could not see his face, she knew at _once_ he was lying. All these years, she had been looking for any sign he gave that he was not being truthful and it had been right there, before her eyes the whole time. It must have registered with her _somewhere_ to be able to note it now, but as he spoke his words to the Kindly Man, they screamed to her of their falsehood.

_What a strange thing to lie about,_ she thought. There, watching him from high above, she held her breath and her eyes grew wide as she waited for the elder to call out his brother's deception.

But he did not.

The Kindly Man accepted Jaqen's explanation without question and the two men stood, facing each other as they prepared to depart the garden, murmuring the sort of things the brothers of the house said to one another when they parted company. Things like, "Go and serve" and "Valar morghulis." Relief flooded through the girl and she thanked the old gods and the new and the Red god and the Many-Faced god and the Drowned god and all the rest that her perch had not been discovered. The elder left first, his brother watching him as he departed. The Cat wondered what kept her master but before she could determine the reason for his delayed departure, she felt her thick, sodden braid slowly slip over her shoulder and fall straight down, swaying slightly. The occurrence was silent but a drop of water which had gathered at the tip of her bound hair and was barely clinging to it suddenly released with the movement and followed a traitorous path straight down to the bench from which her master had just risen. It was as if all the gods she had only just thanked were mocking her, completely contemptuous of her attentions.

It was a tiny drop with an almost invisible movement and a silent landing, but he noticed it anyway. _Of course he did._ The droplet hit the dark stone of the bench and splattered fractionally. Her master looked at the trifling spot of wetness on the bench, no larger than half the size of her smallest fingertip, and dropped his shoulders, sighing. He bowed his head for a long moment and whether it was in prayer or in dismay, she could not say. Without looking up at her (though she _knew_ he knew of her presence), he departed wordlessly.

The girl did not leave her perch in the lemon tree for a long time. She didn't want to risk running into Jaqen until she had figured out what she would say to him; what she would _ask_ him. She needed to think, and the sturdy branches of the tree seemed as good a place as any to consider her many troubling thoughts. She found when she tried to consider the words that the Kindly Man and her master had just exchanged, they became tangled and mixed up with the previous conversation that she had accidentally overheard and also with some of the many things Jaqen had told her over the last few days. She was frustrated with her own inability to link each of the mysteries and clues together to form a coherent picture and finally climbed to the lower branches and dropped down, landing lightly on her feet at the base of the tree. She found her boots tucked neatly between a tree and the wall of the courtyard, slipped them on, and then headed for the kitchen to deliver Umma's lemons to her. She figured of anywhere in the house, the place she was _least_ likely to find her master was in the kitchen.

She found the cook busily prepping the supper (seafood stew was being assembled in a large pot and there was dark bread baking), and offered her the lemons from her doublet. Two of her brothers were helping Umma, shelling the various seafood ingredients, and she noted out loud that whenever she was sent to the kitchen, she was always sent alone, never with one of her brothers.

"That's because you're faster than these useless fools!" Umma declared, striking one on the head lightly with a wooden spoon. The boy cringed but the Cat knew that Umma was just being Umma and didn't mean any real harm. "Thank you for the lemons, little Cat. Shall we have lemon cakes, then?"

The cook smiled fondly at her but the girl heard "lemon cakes" and her mind went instantly to her sister. After all this time, she still couldn't enjoy a bloody sweet without wondering what had happened to Sansa.

"Don't trouble yourself, Umma," the girl said. "You've already planned your supper. Maybe some lemon curd for the bread tomorrow?"

"A fine idea," the cook declared. "Lemon curd on biscuits. Just be sure you show up for breakfast this time. Don't miss my lemon curd to eat that swill they serve in the inns down by the docks."

The girl didn't bother telling the cook that the food had actually been rather delicious. She just smiled and nodded, congratulating herself on her diplomacy, and then left to slink through the halls, listening for her master's voice and trying to remain unseen. She found her way to the range room and spent the next few hours alone, punishing the targets for her grievances.

As supper time approached, she nervously realized that she had two choices: attend the meal and face her master, or hide in her cell and starve. As she left the range room, she started to head toward her cell but remembered the cook's seafood stew ( _and_ her very recent lecture about missing meals) and stopped in her tracks, sighing.

_Umma's seafood stew is worth a lot of trouble_ , she thought.

The girl turned on her heel and marched resolutely to the large dining hall. The room was crowded when she arrived, but much to her surprise and relief, her master was not present. Feeling that she had been dealt a bit of luck, she ate heartily of the dinner, even having a second helping of the stew. The conversation in the hall was lively, almost counting as raucous for the usually subdued members of the order. A good natured argument broke out over the efficacy of half-strength poisons, and the Cat listened with amusement. The hour grew late and finally, the diners began to drift out of the hall, bound for their beds. The girl followed suit, finding some comfort in moving with the crowd. She need not have worried, as her master was nowhere to be seen. She had received a temporary reprieve and could think on how to discuss the incident in the courtyard with him another day.

She opened the door to her cell, reaching through the doorway to the table that sat on the other side of it, meaning to grab the candle she kept in that spot so that she might light it from the torch mounted on the wall only a few steps down the corridor. She felt around the tabletop but did not find the candle. Sighing, she threw the door open wider, letting a little of the torchlight penetrate her room, and stepped over the threshold, hoping she could see if perhaps the candle had rolled onto the floor. As she was staring hard at the deeply shadowed area beneath the simple table, she heard her master's low voice from the far corner of her cell, his measured tone soft and dangerous.

"Close the door."


	23. Chapter 23

The girl hesitated at the door, which she knew would just vex her master further, but she couldn't help it. Rule her face, rule her actions, lie like it was second nature—all these she could do easily. But suppress her survival instinct? That was much harder for her and right now, that instinct was screaming at her to _run._ Part of her argued that Jaqen had never hurt her, not _really,_ and so for her to fear him (and try to run) would be ridiculous. Another part of her, the little voice that had been haranguing her lately, argued that she had never before willfully defied him by doing the _opposite_ of something he had made a particular point of instructing her to do.

She settled on an action that she viewed as a sort of compromise; obedience with a codicil (which was becoming something of a defining trait for her). She closed the door, but as she did so, she feverishly endeavored to explain herself to her master, hidden in the dark of the cell.

"It wasn't my fault, Jaqen," the Cat began quickly, her words tumbling out of her mouth as she softly closed the door to her chamber. "I was climbing that tree to get lemons for Umma and the next thing I knew…"

"Be silent," the assassin hissed, sounding much closer in the dark than he ought to. She was still working out where in the small room she could retreat for safety until she could make him understand that it hadn't _really_ been her fault when she suddenly found herself thrown against the door, spine pressing into the unforgiving wood, unable to move. She would have marveled at his quickness as he gripped both of her wrists in one of his hands, pinning them against the door above her head, but she was too distracted by the unmistakable feel of a cold blade pressing hard against the side of her neck.

She held very still, not daring even a small flinch, feeling his breath on her face, hearing his angry heaving, and waiting for him to say something; _do_ something.

Long moments passed with them standing in this way, face to face, but not seeing each other in the enveloping darkness of the chamber. Slowly, she felt him shift, the ends of his hair brushing her face as his scent drifted over her, all spice and citrus. Her senses were momentarily confused and she became unexpectedly dizzy. She felt his lips brushing her ear then and her mouth went very dry. A sensation gripped her gut, a pressure deeper than the one the Lorathi had created with his fist in the training room, as his warm breath caressed her earlobe, his nose grazing the delicate skin over her jaw. The feeling would have almost been _pleasant,_ but she could not reconcile the gentle gesture with the dagger digging into her neck. He gave a low, quiet growl and she felt it as much as heard it as he pressed his cheek to hers, and then she heard him inhale near her ear before he spoke.

"If a man presses just a little harder _here_ ," her master began coldly, his voice just above the level of a whisper, pushing the point of his dagger into the tender spot on the side of her neck where her pulse was strongest, "and opened this vessel, how long would a girl live?"

She inhaled raggedly, trying and failing to remain calm and keep her breathing steady. When she did not answer him, he pressed the knife slightly harder against her flesh, the tiny movement a threat she could not ignore.

"A man asked a question," he said quietly, his voice hard.

"Um… A.. min… minute. No, l-less than a m-minute," she stuttered, her concentration eluding her, a condition brought on by the blade at her throat and her master's radiating menace. Her mind seemed fractured at the moment, part of her living in dread of what he might be planning to do, part of her working out how she might slip from his grasp and escape, part of her trying to focus on his questioning as if it were some Faceless examination she needed to pass, and part of her… simply _in awe_ of him doing what he _did_ : being a terrifying assassin. She admired this man, the same way Loric admired her, and more than anything, she just wanted to _be_ him.

But first, she had to not get murdered right here in her bedchamber.

"Less than a minute," Jaqen mused. "Just so."

She was relieved to feel the blade leave her throat though her master still held her arms firmly above her head, her knuckles scraping the wooden planks of the doors. Suddenly, she felt him pressing something hard and dull against her cheek, dragging it slowly up her face until it came to rest under her eye. She squeezed her lids shut tightly just as she felt the shift of the pressure, and then it was over her left eyelid. It felt as if he was pushing the tip of his dagger hilt against her eye.

"And if a man pushed his blade through a girl's beautiful grey eye, right _here,"_ he emphasized, rocking the butt of the dagger slightly against her, "how long would she live then?"

She breathed a few shallow breaths and then felt the knife butt press harder, causing her to see stars behind her lid, despite the complete blackness of the cell. Her voice started quietly, but ended in her crying the answer out as he pressed harder.

"It… it depends… It depends on how deeply you plunge the knife!"

"Let us assume a man _buries_ the dagger to its hilt," he murmured in her ear, his tone sounding more appropriate for seduction than threats, "and then _twists_ it."

For a mad instant, she wondered if in their world, seduction and threats might have a common purpose.

"Then death would occur almost instantly," the acolyte responded, swallowing hard as she felt him pull the hilt away from her eye. She could feel what seemed to be three of his fingers and the hilt of the dagger tracing a slow path down her neck to her collarbone. He must have changed his grip on the dagger then because almost immediately, she felt the pinch of the knifepoint through the thick cloth of her quilted doublet, sitting just behind the bone, at about the midpoint.

"And if a man plunges this blade straight down here?" he quizzed.

"You'd likely hit the artery _and_ puncture the lung," she whispered, calmer now, remembering her anatomy lessons with less trouble. "Maybe… two minutes? Possibly less if the tear in the artery was large."

"Likely less than two," he agreed, removing the dagger from its threatening position. The next thing she felt was a choking pressure at her throat as his free hand wrapped tightly around her windpipe, squeezing.

She gasped painfully, able to breathe still, but only just.

"And if a man decided to crush a girl's throat, how long would she have left to defy him?"

"Three minutes," she rasped painfully, "depending on how hard you were squeezing."

"But a lovely girl's throat is so small, and a man's hands are strong," the assassin observed.

"I can hold my breath for a really long time," she croaked in explanation for her response.

He laughed, the sound of it cold and short, and then loosened his grip on her throat but continued to rest his hand there, fingers gently stroking the soft skin he had just been crushing. She remained very, very still but then felt herself start to tremble and cursed inwardly.

_Stillness_ , the Cat reminded herself. _Calm as still water._

"Does a girl wish for a man to open her neck?" Jaqen finally murmured, his lips now hovering just above the top of her head. She felt his chin brushing against her hair.

"No, of course not!" she answered him with a cough, aghast. An elite assassin did not jape about death. _This is no matter for japing_ she recalled, hearing his voice in her head, almost laughing wildly. She drew in a slow breath to calm herself again. _Stillness._

"Perhaps it would be easier if a man crushed your throat and drove the breath out of you," he ruminated. The pressing blackness was playing on her eyes and her mind now, and she began to feel light-headed, though, in truth, she wasn't sure if it was really the darkness that was to blame or her own rapid pulse and spiking adrenaline.

"No! Jaqen, why are you saying these things?"

"A girl insists on interfering with matters she does not understand. The Many-Faced god is not a god for trifling."

"What? I know that, Jaq…"

He interrupted her, his voice sounding both stern and lamenting, saying, "You do _not_ know this, foolish girl. You defy me at every turn!”

She thought to protest but his hand around her neck served to stay her instinct to defend her actions. Her master continued speaking.

“You continually engage in behavior that is nothing short of suicidal!” the assassin declared. “If a girl desires the gift so eagerly, a man would have the thing done by his own hand rather than another's."

He held his hand over her throat for another few seconds and then suddenly, his fingers were digging deeper into the soft flesh, as if he really meant to do it. The Cat drew in one last breath, unsure if she intended to use it to scream or to beg but then, without a word, Jaqen released both her neck and hands. She took several loud, gulping breaths, using her newly freed hands to rub at the small, shallow puncture wound of her neck caused by the knifepoint and to tenderly touch the places that she thought were like to show bruises from her master's fingers on the morrow. While she was still inspecting her injured neck with her fingertips, she felt Jaqen's hands slide up to either side of her face and then he bowed his head, pressing his forehead hard against hers. She could feel the furrow of his brow against her own, his worry becoming her worry. She imagined him with his eyes clenched tightly shut, as if willing a headache to go away. She supposed _she_ was his headache.

He remained in that posture for so long that the girl suddenly felt as if she should comfort _him_ somehow. She reached out and placed her palms against his chest lightly. When she did this, Jaqen dropped his hands from her face and encircled her in his arms, holding her very close. His head was still bent, his forehead still pressing against hers. The apprentice’s hands were trapped in the small space that existed between their bodies but she did not seek to move them, feeling the beating of her master’s heart and the deep movement of his chest as he breathed. She thought she should say something, but she wasn't sure what the right thing to say was just then, so she waited quietly for the assassin to speak again. When he finally did, his voice carried the sound of disappointment and sorrow.

And something else.

"Reckless, willful, _selfish_ girl," he whispered, and he sounded _angry._ He sounded… _hurt_.

And he sounded _scared._ That terrified her more than his dagger ever could.

"I'm sorry, Jaqen," the girl mumbled sadly. "I didn't mean any harm by it."

"A girl never means harm. Of that, a man is certain."

He abruptly released her and she nearly stumbled with the suddenness of his departure. After a short moment, she heard a familiar hissing and faint crackling sound and then the cell suddenly became visible. Jaqen had lit her candle, the one that had been missing, and the chamber was bathed in all the sullen little glow that one small candle could provide.

"Sit," he commanded her and she crossed the small space to her bed and dropped onto it, swinging her legs across its narrow width so that they then hung over the opposite side, her back to her door, her face turned toward her master.

He sat on the only other piece of furniture in the room besides the bed and simple table. It was a chair of the same make as the one in the bath chamber: simple, wooden, and unpadded.

"No more," he told her simply, shaking his head almost imperceptibly.

"But Jaqen, I really didn't mean…" she started, but then her voice trailed off, because though they _had_ surprised her in the garden (again), she really _did_ mean to listen in on their conversation. She had consciously chosen to disobey him.

"Perhaps a man has not been clear enough. He sometimes forgets how young a girl is."

The girl wrinkled her nose at him and glared, misliking, as ever, being told she was a child and that _this_ was the reason for… _anything._

"But in this instance, it matters not how young you are," he continued. "Your youth will not save you. It will not be an excuse. It will garner no sympathy."

Her glare evaporated from her face and she cocked her head, looking at him questioningly.

"A girl knows, though she should not, that her time is short. One way or another, this thing will happen."

_The final trial,_ she thought, her heart skipping a bit so that it seemed as if there was a bird in her chest, fluttering his great wings.

"A man would have you survive until the appointed time, but this wish seems more and more foolhardy with each passing day."

"I don't understand."

His words were biting and quick, like the strike of a poisonous snake.

" _Stupid girl_ ,” the assassin spat, “who do you think your _Kindly Man_ is? Do you think he is a man who will tolerate your disobedience? Do you think he is a man who would welcome _Arya Stark_ into the order? Do you think he is a man who would hesitate, even for a moment, to eliminate any threat to his plans?"

Jaqen shook his head, closing his eyes and scrubbing at his face with his hands, finally running them through his hair. She watched as the candlelight turned his pale forelock gold.

"I'm not _Arya Stark_ ," she replied weakly, sounding a little desperate. "I'm _no one."_

Her master laughed at her then, a bitter, clipped sound, before he told her, "If that were true, we would both be sleeping right now." He looked at her and his face was grim, his eyes solemn as he willed her to understand. "The principal elder is not _charmed_ by your defiance. He will not _forgive_ your rebellion. He has no _use_ for your provocations. What does a girl suppose will happen to her once her _Kindly Man_ has no use for her?"

The girl dropped her head, staring hard at her feet. His words felt ominous. She sensed his inexorable gaze upon her and looked up at his face, struggling to discover the thing that she could say that would make it alright. Finding nothing, she remained silent.

" _Arya Stark_ does whatever she pleases," her master said with distaste. " _Arya Stark_ cares nothing for consequences. _Arya Stark_ is reckless."

" _Arya Stark_ was given a gift by her master," she reminded him meekly but it was almost an accusation; a reminder that in this matter, she was not the only one who was culpable.

"Yes, but a man had believed that a girl had the wits to leave _Arya Stark_ at the inn, or at least enough sense not parade her into the House of Black and White through the front doors!" he retorted, his irritation readily apparent.

She wanted to tell him that in reality, she had not come through the ebony and weirwood doors but rather had climbed over the courtyard wall, but she knew that this would be a bad idea. _A very, very bad idea._ In a considered bid for self-preservation, the Cat said nothing and had the good judgment to look shamed. Her master fell silent and turned away from her, as if the very sight of her made him so angry that he could not bear to look upon her face. She stared at him, studying his expression, trying to decide if it was pained or livid, and then she saw the three raking scratches at his neck and felt worse than ever.

She dropped to the floor before him, leaning her cheek against his knee as she clasped her slender fingers around either side of his calf. After a moment, she felt his fingers slipping into her hair, weaving the loose strands between them, his hand resting atop her head.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm _sorry_ ," the girl whispered, each word spoken as gently and sincerely as a mother's kiss upon her babe's brow.

She heard him sigh and then he responded in a tired voice, "A man would have your obedience, not your apologies."

She pulled her cheek from his knee and as his hand dropped away from her head, she turned her shining eyes upon his and said, "You have both."

He surveyed her face, examining her expression and appraising her eyes. He felt the truth of her words and knew she meant them. He pressed his concern, seeking to remind her of her vow to him, made only one day prior.

"And does a girl remember the promise she made to a man yesterday?"

There had been several, as she recalled. The Cat ticked them off in her head, trying to land on the one that Jaqen seemed to want her to remember.

_I will not weep again._

_I will never drink wine again._

_You can tell me anything, I promise I will not run away in the night._

_I will do my duty, whatever is asked._

"I promised to do my duty," she said, seizing on the correct answer.

" _Whatever_ is asked," he reminded her.

"Yes, whatever is asked," she agreed.

He stood and so did she. They faced each other, so close that it seemed his breathing robbed her of her very air. She took a half step back, feeling colder as she did. Haltingly, she raised her hand, biting her lip without thinking as she allowed her fingertips to trace the scratches along his neck to where they met his collarbone. They were thin, grooved ribbons of dried blood.

"It looks better today," the acolyte murmured, "but it's like to scar."

Her master gave her a wry smile and said, "A lasting reminder of a man's little Cat, then." He grasped her hand, pressing it to his wound for a moment, feeling the soothing touch of her cool palm before he pushed it away.

And then he was gone.

It wasn't until she drew back the soft blanket from her bed to settle herself in it that she saw the wispy sleeping gown and deep purple robe folded neatly next to her pillow.

* * *

 

The Cat awoke early the next morning, before the sunrise, and quickly dressed in her doublet and breeches, just as she had the day before. She anticipated that she would be sparring again after breakfast and before her temple duties which were set to begin after the midday meal. She frowned at the gown and robe that she had placed in her chair, unsure what to do with them. Finally, she hid them under her pillow and then pulled her blanket over _that_. Not content to wait in her room until it was time to break her fast with her brothers, she instead bounded off toward the kitchen, thinking to snatch a biscuit as soon as it was baked. She found Umma there alone and greeted her.

"Did you make someone angry, girl?" the cook asked her.

_Who_ hadn't _she made angry, lately? Maybe Loric…_ she thought but wasn't sure what the cook meant and asked, "What are you talking about?"

"Your neck," the woman observed. "It looks as if someone tried to choke the life out of you."

The Cat's hands moved reflexively to her neck and she cursed her own pale skin and her tendency to bruise. She had thought that the high neck of her doublet had concealed the dark marks but apparently, something was still visible above her collar.

"Strangling lessons," the girl remarked lightly. "Are the biscuits ready?"

"Humph," Umma snorted, not distracted by the talk of biscuits, but she said no more about the bruises and told the girl, "Hold on, impatient girl, they're nearly done. And I made that lemon curd you asked for last night. It's on the shelf, over there."

She indicated a small bowl, covered over with a clean rag, and the Cat reached over and pulled it down, removing the cloth and seeing the pale yellow stuff mounded in the dish.

"I'm glad I'm up early, this doesn't look like it will last long," the girl declared, dipping her finger into the bowl and scooping out a taste. It was sweet and sour all at once on her tongue, a combination of flavors she adored, finding it much more satisfying than the honey with which her later-rising brothers would have to content themselves.

Umma gave her a brisk swat on her hand, causing the girl to cry, "Ow!" though it was mostly for the cook's benefit.

"Wait for the biscuits," the woman reproved the girl, almost smiling. The Cat knew that Umma delighted in her appreciation of the cook's dishes.

Soon, the biscuits were ready and the girl grabbed one from the hot tray, juggling it in her hands to keep from burning her fingers until it was cool enough to hold. She slathered on a thick layer of the gooey curd and took a bite, getting a smear of the stuff on her chin. Umma groused at her but the girl laughed and just wiped it off with her fingers, setting about sucking on them noisily. By the time breakfast was actually ready, her belly was full and so she passed the small dining hall and nearly went to the courtyard. As she approached the garden door, she thought the better of it and veered away from the rear exit, heading then to the range room instead. She thought she might throw some knives at the targets.

_Target practice is much safer than a walk in the garden these days,_ she thought. On the way, she crossed paths with the waif, likely on her way to break her fast.

"Valar morghulis," the tiny woman said, inclining her head to the Cat.

"Valar dohaeris," the girl replied respectfully.

"I am going to a council meeting," the waif told her in High Valyrian.

"You lie," the girl replied, "you are going to breakfast."

"Just so," the waif agreed. "After breakfast, there will be a council meeting."

"This is the truth," the girl noted, and then was suddenly gripped with anxiety. _Were they going to discuss her?_ But then she brushed the feeling away quickly, telling herself not to be so paranoid. Later, she would find herself wondering why the waif had mentioned it at all.

The small woman swept past the Cat gracefully and the girl continued to her destination, finding the room empty as she knew it would be at this hour. She grasped an assassin's belt from a peg on the wall, heavy with the sharp steel blades which weren't as fine as her own, but were adequate for practice. As she threw her knives in rapid succession at each of three targets, she repeated a cadence in her head, over and over.

_Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei. Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn Queen Cersei._

After her fingertips began to feel raw from the constant handling of the blades, she replaced the weapons on their peg and left the room, thinking she might swing her swords a bit and loosen up before Jaqen arrived in the training room to spar with her ( _after the council meeting,_ she supposed). She was surprised to see him in the long passageway as she headed toward her new destination.

"A man was looking for a lovely girl," he greeted as he approached her. "He expected to find her in the training room when he did not see her at breakfast."

"I was throwing some knives," she explained.

"Skewering _Queen Cersei_ , no doubt," he replied, his voice teasing but the mirth did not rise to his eyes. He reached out his fingertips and touched her neck softly above her collar, looking at the bruised skin there. "A man has duties just now."

"The council meeting," she finished for him.

He shook his head at her and sighed, saying, "Perhaps a man should make you his steward rather than his apprentice. You seem ever aware of his schedule."

"I ran into the waif," the apprentice pouted defensively. "It's not as if I overheard it while hanging from a lemon tree."

His look was instantly murderous and the hand at her neck moved to grasp her chin firmly, forcing it up as he leaned his face very, very close to hers. His whisper was so quiet that she had to strain her ears to hear her master’s words.

"We do not speak of this thing," he warned. " _Especially_ in the passageways of the temple."

She swallowed hard and nodded. Her mentor released her chin

"Until a man returns, you may spar with your brothers."

"There are others in the training room?" she asked him, backing away slightly and leaning against the cool stone wall.

"The large bear of a boy and the Westerosi," he informed her. "It will do a girl good to try her dual-blade technique on opponents with styles different than a man's."

She groaned, drawing a sharp look from her master.

"It's just that… they _hate_ me," she explained.

"Good," he retorted, showing no concern. When she pinched her face, looking at him in confusion, he said, "In the future, does a girl only plan to fight to the death with people who love her?"

The Cat sighed, seeing his point, but she wasn't completely convinced that he just didn't want her to take a beating. Her master left her and she watched him walk down the hallway with his Lorathi swagger, his thumb hooked in his sword belt, and it seemed to her that he had a little extra bounce in his step. _Yes, he definitely wanted her to take a beating._ Steeling herself with a few deep breaths, she stalked to the training room door and pushed through it.

Jaqen had right of it; two of her brothers were already there, wrangling with large, blunted greatswords. She watched them for a while as they sparred, finding their moves familiar. They seemed to have gotten stronger through their years of training, but they had not gotten much smarter. Her master's words, spoken in this very room the day before, came back to her and she realized that her brothers were using strength alone against each other, forgetting that _there is an intelligence to swordplay_. They stood in the center of the room, taking great, hacking swings at one another, seeming intent on crushing each other's skulls. She snorted at that, shaking her head at their ungainly attacks, wondering why more of her brothers did not embrace the water dancer's style, with its grace and finesse. The greatsword certainly had reach, and there was a weight behind the blows that, when properly dealt, was impressive, but if one possessed quickness and a mastery of the slender _Bravos_ blade, there really was no contest, as far as she was concerned. It was like asking a sluggish bear to battle a pit viper.

Her brothers stopped when they heard her derisive noises and offered sarcastically to spar with her and her little _twig_ of a sword instead, their courage obviously bolstered by the fact that they were two and there to egg each other on, but also by the fact that she was not wearing an assassin's belt and had no throwing blades handy.

She shrugged, her face uninterested, and said, "I have a few minutes to spare, since my master is otherwise occupied."

She grabbed the blades she would be expected to use from the rack and turned to face the boy who had beaten her in the training tourney. _The Lyseni Bear,_ his brothers had named him, and the title was apt. The looming boy stepped back, allowing his smaller brother, the rat-faced boy, the first round against the smug little Cat. Both boys laughed when they saw her holding that long bastard sword _and_ the narrow _Bravos_ blade.

"Look, she must be scared if she thinks she needs two swords to beat us," the Bear commented sarcastically. "Or maybe she thinks she's too good to use just _one_ sword."

"Starks think that they're too good for _everything,_ " the rat-faced boy spat nastily before he leapt toward her with a great, swooping swing of his large blade. His arms hardly looked strong enough to wield it properly, the Cat thought, but though he was small, he was wiry and had ropes of muscle straining in his limbs. His arms had to work hard to move the sword but they were doing it nonetheless.

He hacked at her as he had been hacking at their brother, heavy swings that wouldn't open any wounds due to the dullness of his edge but would possibly break a bone and definitely smash a nose if they connected. She simply slid side to side as he tried to crash his blows down upon her head, deftly avoiding his swings. _He's wielding that thing like an axe_ , she thought with amusement. Trying out the muscles in her arms, finding them still sore but serviceable, she smacked his two shoulders, first with her smaller blade, then with her larger. The Rat made a face at her, signaling his long-standing dislike of his sister.

The girl paid her brother’s contempt no mind, focusing instead of what Jaqen had said to her the day before in this same room. She tried to feel in her gut what she should do next and attempted to tap into her instinct as she danced around the training room just beyond the reach of the Westerosi boy’s sword. She allowed him to chase her a bit with his heavy sword, thinking to tire him out, ever able to avoid his cuts and blows with her graceful movements as she heard Syrio chanting in her head. _Swift as a deer,_ the First Sword of Braavos said _. Quick as a snake._

After a few moments, she heard, _fierce as a wolverine,_ and it was _she_ who was chasing _him_.

The boy's beady eyes widened, as much as they were able to, and he seemed genuinely surprised by her attack. She thought him foolish (and _a man with wits will always have the advantage)_ , as he had seen her spar many times, had sparred _with_ her, and so should have recalled that she had an aggressive nature. But then she realized the bastard blade was new and he had thought it would be a great advantage to _him_. A grin split her face and the girl set out to correct her brother’s misconceptions. She could have disarmed him half a dozen times in this space, forcing him to yield, but she was enjoying his panicked look and their brother's disbelieving comments and attempts to encourage the rat-faced boy, and so she held back, _just enough_ , and just for a time.

The Cat knew much of the boy's talent in swordplay lay in his acrobatic abilities. She had studied his tumbling and leaping passes at length, usually unbeknownst to him, so she was ready when he dove toward the floor to avoid what was actually one of the feints she used to draw him in. The boy tucked gracefully into an impossibly tight ball, making one complete rotation in the air before he landed crouched on the floor before her. Had she the time, she would have admired the beauty of his movements, but as it was, he was making one great swing around her, meaning to knock her knees out from under her from behind and lay her out flat.

As if it were all part of a choreographed dance, the girl hopped straight up into the air, bending at the knee, the toes of her boots just skimming the edge of the greatsword as it passed beneath her. The rat-faced boy had not anticipated her move as she had anticipated his and he recklessly threw his sword back in a horizontal arc opposite of the one it had just flown, hoping to catch her on the backswing. His blow was too late and missed her as she jumped again. While leaping, she crossed her two swords high above, making a perfect steel _X_ over her head without thinking. As she landed before the still-crouched boy, she dropped the _X_ of her blades so that it was in a position mirroring the one it had occupied in the air, blade-tips now pricking at the ground, the boy's wrists trapped just beneath that point where her swords kissed one another. He was grasping the hilt of his own steel tightly, eyes glaring daggers at the girl as he tried to work out his best option, but she was too fast for him. His wrists sat at the invisible joint of her blades the same way a sheet of velvet might slide to the pivot point of a great pair of shears before the tool closed and sharp blades severed the material from itself. The Cat swiftly threw her arms out wide, as if ready to embrace the whole world. This created one long line across her body, from fingertip to fingertip (and sword-tip to sword-tip), wrenching the boy's wrists painfully in the rapidly changing vise of her blades and his steel clattered loudly as he dropped it with a piercing cry. She had a fleeting thought that if the blades were not blunted, the rat-faced boy would have just lost both hands.

Her moves were instinctive. She had no time to stop and ponder them, making no decisions, all instinct and reaction in her motions, using her wits instead to read her opponent.

_Opponents._

She ducked just in time to avoid a vicious blow leveled at her ear by the lumbering bear who had beaten her before. _What lessons were learned from that defeat? He is tireless and meeting his steel with mine only rattles my bones until they are too tired to obey my commands,_ she recalled, hopping upright and twirling around him on one foot so that she was now at his back. As he spun laboriously around to face her, she recalled one other important thing she had learned. _He is slow. Very, very slow._

He lifted his heavy blade high above his head, meaning to send it crashing down atop her skull, but she used the end of her _Bravos_ blade to give him a sharp rap on the tip of his nose ( _quick as a snake)_ and then danced out of his reach before he could respond. Blood began pouring from his nose and over his lips, now pulled back in a dangerous snarl. She laughed mercilessly and shook her head as his greatsword took its originally intended path and sliced the air where she had been standing, striking the floor with a loud, metallic chirp.

_So very slow._

_"_ Stand still and _fight_ ," the hulking acolyte commanded, heaving his sword once again over his head, aiming to send an angled blow down upon her hip. She took three almost tip-toeing steps to the side, easily avoiding his grunting blow, and laughed again.

"Why would I stand still, Ser Speed?" she japed. "I am but a young maid and so very fond of _dancing!_ "

She glanced quickly at the rat-faced boy to make sure he hadn't retrieved his blade, planning to aid his brother, but he still sat sullenly upon the floor, nursing his injured wrists, the swelling in them already apparent. She had wrenched them powerfully—it was possible that they were broken. She spared no pity for him and instead spun once again around the Bear, so fast she was merely a blur to his eyes, and brought both swords to the soft spot behind his knees, swinging them together as one might swing an axe meant to fell a thick tree. With a stifled, "Oomph!" the boy did fall, though exactly like the large, lumbering boy he was rather than like a tree, knees striking hard against the stone floor. Before he could react, the Cat had plastered herself to his broad back, trapping his neck between her swords, bastard blade pressed firmly against his throat while the narrow _Bravos_ blade caressed the nape of his neck. If the blades had not been blunted, she could have removed his head as easily as a child could pull the wings from a fly.

"Yield," she said softly, her irresistible command delivered as a whisper in the boy's ear. She had very recently been reminded that sometimes, a whispered demand could be infinitely more terrifying than one delivered with a roar, and there was power in the fear of others.

"I yield," the Bear said without hesitation. When she released him, he stood and turned to look at her with wonder.

"When did you start training with two swords?" he wanted to know, eyeing her with what looked like respect even as he wiped the blood from his nose and lips onto his sleeve. Respect was not something she was used to seeing in the eyes of her brothers and it felt different than the disdain and the fear she was more accustomed to getting.

"A few days ago," she replied nonchalantly.

" _A few days_ …" he cried, astonished.

She shrugged, thinking but not saying that it was likely she had beaten the boys as much due to their lack of skill as her abundance of it.

Before he could say more, the rat-faced boy called to his brother, demanding to be taken to the waif to receive some relief for his injuries. The Cat rolled her eyes at him but said nothing as the large boy helped his fellow from the ground and supported him as he limped toward the door of the training room.

_Why is he limping?_ the Cat thought. _I didn't touch his ankles._ As the Bear allowed the rat-faced boy to pass through the door first, he turned back to look at his sister, a smile beginning to crease his wide face.

"Hey, Cat, do you think you could show _me_ how to fight with two swords?" her large brother asked.

The girl’s brows lifted and her eyes widened in surprise, but then she nodded her assent. The Lyseni Bear bowed his blonde head to her in appreciation and then left to follow the rat-face boy down the hall, in search of some concoction or another to dull the pain of his swollen wrists. Not even a minute after the boys left, her master entered the room, a questioning look displayed on his face.

"What happened to your brothers?" he queried, having seen the large boy with blood smeared on his face and the Westerosi boy favoring his wrists as they retreated down the long passageway.

"A simple misunderstanding," she sniffed.

"A _misunderstanding?_ " her mentor pressed, crossing his arms and looking at her as she took a few swipes at the air with her swords, loosening up her arms.

" _Just so_ ," she replied, imitating his lilting Lorathi accent. "They _misunderstood_ that I am better with a sword than they are. Or rather, with _two_ swords."

Her master shook his head, but said nothing as he selected his customary longsword from the wall and asked his apprentice if she was ready to begin.

She answered him by sliding into her stance and saying with exaggerated breathiness, "A young maid is so _very_ fond of dancing."


	24. Chapter 24

The Cat was surprisingly tireless during her sparring session with her master. The ache in her muscles had diminished from a degree of pain that inspired wretched screaming and wishing for death to a pleasant sensation; the simple feeling of the pulling and stretching of her muscles as she dodged, parried, and thrust her way around the training room. She found she was able to move and control the bastard sword much better than she had the last few times she had sparred with Jaqen and her smaller blade was beginning to feel natural in her right hand. She did not deceive herself that she was nearly as good as her master with _either_ weapon, but she happily noted that she had improved. Her mentor commented upon this as well.

"Good," he praised as she used the heavy bastard sword to divert a blow from his blade. "A girl has been more effective using her blades as one device but will also need to use them just as she did then, separately, if she wishes to master this style."

She grunted her understanding, thrusting at his belly with her smaller blade but missing as he gracefully turned side face, her blade cutting only air. On and on they went, her master seeming to move around her effortlessly, giving points of advice, small critiques and occasional encouragements, especially when she effectively used her bastard blade. Her braid slapped heavily at her back as she ducked and whirled beneath another almost blazingly swift cut from Jaqen, and as he moved to repeat his swing in the other direction, she saw her opportunity and attempted to duplicate her sliding move from their exercise two days past. This time, as with the last, it provided her with an effective escape from her master's elegant attack but he saw her intention, and responded to it accordingly as she slid on her knees. He changed his position automatically, turning around in a half-circle so that she was not able to disarm him this time with her crossed blades despite her successful avoidance of his cut. He smiled at her as she spun in one fluid move from her sliding, reclined posture with back perfectly arched as she faced away from him, to a low stance from which she was prepared to leap toward him , one leg bent beneath her, the other out straight at her side, toe pointed against the floor. Her arms were extended fully to her sides, her blades held out straight and pointing in opposite directions, like great, sharp wings. Jaqen studied her closely, wishing to commit the image of her _just like this_ to his memory. She was fierce and young and unafraid; so very beautiful.

Her master appraised the way her arms were held steady, showing no strain from the heavy steel even after their long practice.

"How is it that a girl is not tired yet?" he asked her. "Is this perhaps some beneficial effect from the wine a widow consumed recently?"

"Ugh!" she moaned in a disgusted voice, pulling her blades down as she rose from her crouched position. " _Please_ don't mention sweet red to me _ever_ again!"

He laughed at her exaggerated revulsion and said, "Still, it does not seem to have had any lingering ill effects. The opposite, if anything."

"It wasn't the wine, I assure you!" she declared with a grimace, trying not to think about how awful she had felt during their interlude at the inn. "I thought it might have been one of the tricks you learned in Asshai. Did you pinch me in my sleep to give me extra energy today? Should I inspect some specific spot on my foot for a bruise?"

She meant it as a light-hearted jest, not thinking of the more recent bruises he had given her, but as soon as she said it, she felt the weight of her blunder and stopped, looking at her master for his reaction. An uncomfortable silence fell; at least, it was uncomfortable for _her_. Her master appeared as indecipherable as ever, remaining completely expressionless as he looked at her. After a moment, his face took on the look he got when he was considering something (and he actually wished for her to _know_ he was considering something). He returned his training sword to its place and then bade his apprentice to do the same.

"But I'm not tired yet!" she cried in disappointment.

"There are more lessons a Faceless Man needs than swordplay," the Lorathi admonished and she reluctantly placed her swords back in their respective racks. He directed her to sit on the wooden bench before him and the girl obeyed, curious as to what lesson her master had for her now. As soon as the Cat had settled herself in her seat, the assassin grabbed the collar of her doublet and pulled it open briskly without warning, baring her neck and drawing from her lips a sharp gasp.

"Bloody hells, Jaqen!" she cried, grabbing at her clothes and clutching the edges of the doublet together over her bruised throat.

He impatiently flicked at her hands with his own, knocking them away as he knelt before her on one knee, opening the doublet up once again, laying her neck and upper chest bare, though he preserved her modesty (as ridiculous as it was, considering their time in the bath only a few days ago). He hushed her with a hard look, needing no words to express how ludicrous he found her concerns.

He studied her neck and traced the line of her collarbone with his fingers and her mind frantically clawed at her internal chant, desperately grabbing onto it, turning it almost into a hymn, sung to herself in order to keep her from gasping or shivering or doing anything else absurd before her master's eyes. _Stillness. Stillness. StillnessStillnessStillness STILLNESS!_ Her shoulders were still covered by the cap of the doublet's sleeve and he impatiently clenched the material above her left arm, yanking it down, baring her entire shoulder. She could hold her tongue no longer.

"Jaqen, why are you tearing at my clothes?" she demanded, her voice unsteady.

"Shhh," he said irritably, placing his thumb in the notch of her neck and wrapping his first two fingers around the curve of her bare shoulder. At first she had thought he meant to inspect the superficial injuries she incurred as he had made some very _stringent_ points during their _communications_ in her cell the night before but he largely ignored her bruises and scratches. He seemed to be using the slightly rounded line formed by his hand as a way to measure… _something._

With his free hand, he gently pushed against her jaw, turning her face away from the shoulder wrapped by his fingers. He then used that hand to feel along the taut cords of muscle in her neck, probing their length. After a few seconds, he seemed to find the spot he wanted, rolling his two fingers behind the tense muscle which ran from her ear to the notch at the base of her throat where his thumb rested. He placed his fingers in that soft space for only a brief moment before dropping them straight down to her collarbone, watching as the line he traced intersected the place marked by a specific part of the hand he had stretched out along her bone. He then gently rocked his fingers over the plane of the bone, dropping his other hand. He still had not spoken and she began to grow impatient. The Cat was about to insist he explain himself when she heard him mutter something in a language she did not recognize and then found herself gripped with a sudden, blinding pain in the spot where his fingers were now digging deep down behind the bone. The pain radiated like a blazing sunburst from the spot her master was assaulting and then it felt as if her left arm had lost all sensation and it dangled uselessly by her side. She willed it to move (or at least _tried_ to will it through the intense pain) so that she might use it to push him away from her, but there was no response and then her vision began to go dark. She was near to fainting when instantly, she was recovered.

In her astonishment, the girl was at a loss for what she should do. She wanted to slap Jaqen. She wanted to lunge for a blunted blade and bloody his nose the way she had bloodied her brother's earlier. But most of all, she wanted him to tell her _what exactly he did and how he did it_ (although she was perfectly willing to beat the information out of him).

"That was only a small taste of what this skill can do," her master said nonchalantly, as if he were discussing the amount of salt on his mutton. "If a man had pressed harder or longer, a girl would have been rendered insensible, and for quite a long time, a man should imagine."

"What in the seven hells _was_ that?" the Cat demanded to know, her voice sounding angry. "Is that another of your tricks from Asshai?"

"A girl will master this skill," he told her, not acknowledging her anger. "This is a most useful thing to know."

"I can see that," she muttered, trying out her arm and finding it completely serviceable, "but how does it work?"

"Tell a man what you remember."

She thought over all of his actions and tried to recount them in their proper order.

"You seemed to measure my collarbone with your fingers, then you traced the muscle in my neck to a point, and then you dropped your fingers into a spot that you somehow calculated with those two actions."

"Is that all?" he asked casually, raising one eyebrow at her.

"No!" she hissed. " _Then_ you mumbled some bloody magical words while you jammed your fingers into my nerves and artery and made me feel like you had just cleaved my arm from my body with a dull sword while simultaneously suffocating me!"

"Just so," he nodded, either choosing to ignore her tone or planning some elaborate correction to her attitude for later. With him, she could never be sure. "What words did a man say?"

She narrowed her eyes and looked down at the floor to her left, trying to call up the memory.

"It was… an-ha… assab demi?"

" _An'ha assab dami_ ," he corrected her. "Say the words."

"An'ha assab dami?"

"Yes. In the common tongue, it would be akin to saying 'to stop the blood and nerves.' Say them again."

She did as she was told but then asked, "Why are they important?"

His eyes were not on hers as he considered his answer. Instead, they were resting on the fading bruises of her upper arm, remnants of her first day sparring with the bastard sword. He wrapped his fingers around her arm, stroking the ugly green and brown marks with his thumb, one corner of his mouth quirked maddeningly upward. _Was he actually smiling as he remembered slapping her arms with the flat of his sword? Others take him, she was_ certain _that he was!_ He reached out for the bunched cloth of the doublet shoved down over her shoulder and arm and tugged it back into place, covering the bruised skin with the quilted fabric once again. He then set about fastening the edges of her open garment, closing her doublet again as he answered her.

"Some of the things a man learned in Asshai are simply forgotten skills of the earliest healers which survive still in that mysterious part of the world. They are things maesters might have employed in your Westeros if they had only remembered that they once knew them. They are manipulations of the anatomy, the circulation, and the nerves which bear an effect on different conditions of the body."

"Like queasiness and vomiting?"

He smiled at that, giving her a small laugh and said, "Yes, wayward Cat, like the condition a girl might suffer if she lacked discipline or experience in such matters as knowing how much wine was prudent for a small girl to drink in one night."

She made a face at him but there was nothing she could say.

"Some of the things a man learned in Asshai are no simple healers' tricks, however," he revealed. "Some are rooted in a darker place."

"Blood magic?" she queried in a hushed voice.

"Blood magic," he confirmed.

"Can I _do_ blood magic?"

"A girl has spilled more than enough blood in her life to pay for this small spell," he informed her. "As long as she only uses it when needed."

She thought about that—she didn't really know much about blood magic. Just that it _was_ magic… and required blood. But she trusted her mentor and so committed the words to memory.

"You may practice on a man," he told her, but then, giving her a warning look, added, "Do not speak the words."

 _Of course not,_ she thought almost bitterly. _He can paralyze me with horrible pain and then nearly render me unconscious with his thrice-damned eastern spells but I'm only allowed to poke on his collarbone._

Still, she obeyed her mentor, leaning forward toward him as he knelt on the floor before her. She then hesitated, her hands fluttering uselessly about his neck and shoulders, having encountered his jerkin and blouse and unsure what to do about it. He cocked his head at her in amusement.

"What is the trouble, lovely girl?" he purred, a dimple forming on one cheek as his bronze eyes gave her a ridiculously practiced _soulful_ look.

A sound rumbled up from her throat as her cheek colored and she bit her lip. The noise she was making was a mix of a groan and a growl, signaling both her irritation with Jaqen's teasing and her own self-admonishment for her stupid embarrassment and awkwardness. To cover her mortification, she began to artlessly tear at his clothes. Her feelings of discomfort only intensified when she found her fingers were not capable of anything defter than a fumbling at the clasps of her master's jerkin and the laces of his blouse. He placed his hands over top of hers, weaving his strong fingers together with her slender ones, stilling her trembling motions. He allowed their hands to rest there against his chest for a moment, enmeshed, as he studied the way his tanned skin contrasted with her own snowy flesh. He then looked up from their intertwined fingers to her face and when she saw his sympathetic bronze eyes shining with discernible _understanding,_ she drew in a deep breath and relaxed under his fond gaze, waiting for his calming words or sage advice.

"A man will do this thing," he volunteered sweetly, "lest a girl's clumsy fingers damage his favorite clothes."

"Bah!" she barked at him, instantly livid, jerking her hands from beneath his, the knuckles of her balled fists jamming forcefully against the seat of the bench.

"A man wonders if his paralyzing spell did some lasting damage to a girl's coordination or if she is just so inexperienced with the removing of men's clothing that she does not understand how it is done," he needled as he smoothly removed his jerkin and blouse, sitting before her now bare from the waist up.

She glared at him, a deep frown on her face, thinking _he didn't have to get completely bloody naked for this lesson_. She tried very earnestly to focus on his face, ignoring the tanned, muscled chest exposed two feet in front of her. She failed, her eyes involuntarily darting down then flicking back up, then darting down again. She felt the heat creeping up her neck and tried to stanch it by thinking of every curse she had ever heard in her life.

"Should a man ask the principal elder to assign a girl to a brothel so she can observe the art of opening a shirt?" Jaqen wondered out loud, interrupting her internal litany of profanity. "Most acolytes are able to master this task without special instruction, but a lovely girl has never been quite like the other acolytes…"

"I swear to all the gods, Jaqen, if you don't shut your…"

"Do not obligate yourself to _all the gods_ , hot-tempered Cat, a man merely japes with you," he assured her, grasping her left fist and delicately unfolding her clenched fingers. He placed her hand on his neck and continued, "A man would never begrudge you your innocence."

Her mouth drew itself into a tight line and she wasn't sure what was worse—the thought that her mentor would be willing to abandon her to a bloody _brothel_ to learn a basic skill (that she definitely had _no need_ to practice; surely he knew she was capable of removing clothes. It probably _was_ that stupid blood magic that had stiffened her fingers!) or the thought that he _wouldn't_ be willing to send her there out of regard for some idea of her innocence.

_Innocence!_

She was a dealer of _death_ , an _almost_ -Faceless Man, an _eater_ of hearts and blood, and a _killer_ of stable boys and gate guards and torturers! By the Seven, she was the child of a resurrected vigilante! She was reviled by the ghost of High Heart for the very darkness within her. She was the instrument of Him of Many Faces. She was feared by her brothers within this temple of death. She had once even scarred the neck of the most terrifying assassin she knew. There was no _innocence_ to be found within her anymore! She was convinced that she had killed it off completely.

She did not realize that her lack of recognition of the innocence that _was_ left to her was itself proof of the existence of that innocence.

"Here," her master said, turning his head and tightening the cords of muscle that controlled its movement. He took her hand, dragging it down the path of the anterior muscle. "Even in a fat man, this landmark should be easy to find."

Jaqen was _not_ a fat man. His anatomy was perfectly defined for her, making the features he wanted her to know supremely easy to see and the ones that had nothing to do with this lesson distressingly obvious to her as well.

The Cat tried to shake off her pique _as well as_ her distraction so that she might focus on her master’s lesson. He instructed her to roll her fingers over the back of the muscle and feel the soft space behind it. She did as he directed and pulled her fingers down slowly over the slanting space until he bade her stop. She did and he said she should remember this spot. As she noted where her fingers rested, he took her other hand, splaying her thumb and forefinger out wide and resting them in the same place his had been on her, _her_ thumb in the notch of _his_ neck now, fingers reaching toward the rounded edge of his shoulder. His chest was broader than hers, of course, and her hand was smaller than his, so she couldn't reach the same spot he had on the shoulder.

"Drop your fingers straight down," her mentor directed, placing his two fingers over hers on his neck, guiding her path. When they came to rest on his collarbone, he said she should note which part of her hand her fingers intersected. "This is your measurement."

She nodded, not understanding quite how such a laborious measuring process was going to be tolerated by any person she was attempting to incapacitate with this technique. She voiced her doubt and her master shook his head at her, smiling, giving a little snort.

"Silly girl, you will only do this once, right here. A man merely attempts to help you understand how this skill is executed and the spot a girl must know in order to do this thing."

"Oh," she replied, biting her lip and again coloring a bit.

"This place your fingers now rest," her master continued, ignoring her discomfort, "marks the spot of the bone that guards the nerve, muscle, and artery a girl must trap with her two fingers as she says the words. Allow your fingers to drop behind the bone. Do you feel that?"

"Yes," the girl answered him as she prodded the place behind the designated spot on his collarbone, feeling the flesh give slightly under her fingers.

"Here, you must use force and press down quickly."

"Now?" she asked him uncertainly, not sure if he meant for her to attempt this skill on him.

He laughed at her, "It is merely uncomfortable without the words, lovely girl. A man must feel your accuracy so that he may correct any mistakes now. If you are to do this thing, it must be…"

His lecture was cut off by his own surprised cry of pain as the Cat jammed her vengeful claws into the spot her master had bade her press. He knocked her hand away and placed his own protectively over his injured flesh, his stunned look giving his apprentice a happy tickling sensation deep inside. _Well, I felt_ that _in my gut,_ she thought almost giddily. He glared at her a moment and then regained his composure.

"A girl has the spot," Jaqen declared gruffly, rising up from his place before her as he grabbed the clothes piled next to him off the floor. He turned and sat next to the girl on the bench. She swiveled her head to look at him, her face at the level of the healing scratches on his neck. She exhaled heavily upon seeing them and the two of them were sitting so close together that her breath collided with the fading red of the flesh around the wounds. As she watched, tiny goose prickles arose on his neck, causing her to raise an eyebrow. Suddenly, the lines of the scratches changed their shape with the movement of his neck. He was now looking down at her, his liquid bronze eyes seeming to vacillate between serene and troubled. Wordlessly, her master pulled his loose blouse over his head, leaving the laces across his chest open as he finished his lesson on this little bit of blood magic he was allowing her.

"This thing is a girl's to do when she finds herself without a weapon and has a need to incapacitate an enemy."

"I can see its usefulness, Jaqen, but I can't pinch a man's nerve through his plate."

"No, lovely girl, you cannot. This is not a thing for the battlefield. This is a thing for closer contact."

She shook her head, not understanding. _What was closer than clashing steel with an enemy?_

He smiled at her confused look sadly and continued, "A girl is small. To those who do not know her, she will appear weak. There are times when men who mean you harm may seek to use this perceived weakness against you. There may also be times a girl chooses to use their misconceptions to her advantage. You cannot always be sure that you will have a knife strapped to your thigh when some brutish knight attempts to hurt you, sweet child."

Understanding dawned on her, and her cheek lost its color. Jaqen really _did_ have concern for her _innocence._ She remembered the flash of anger she had detected when she had made the comment about Gendry being no knight. _Did this Gendry_ hurt _a girl?_ She recalled his dangerous tone as he spoke those words and the shiver that now inched up her spine would not be suppressed. She wanted to tell her master not to spend his worry on her. She would be neither victim nor paramour; neither wife nor whore to any man. Her future of blood and steel was as clear to her now as it had ever been and nowhere in that future did she see a time where she would allow herself to be weakened by love or lust or the domination of any man's will over her own.

All that she knew of men and women together did little to change her mind about her intended role; the raping and whoring she'd seen at Harrenhal and on the King's Road; the stupid stories her sister loved about knights so gallant and ladies so perfect that the Cat recognized them for what they were: a lie with which to entice imbecilic little girls to become imbecilic and weak women; the lords and ladies, bound together in septs and godswoods only to be separated by duty and honor, service and war; the separation leaving only despair and longing in its wake. King Robert and Queen Cersei had ruled over the entire realm together and yet there was no love or happiness in their marriage. Her _own parents_ , however, had seemed to be very happy, and their marriage was a success both personally and politically, but that had not saved either of them when it really mattered. Lyanna abandoned all (for love, it was whispered) and the price was blood and tears and her own life. Love was weakness, marriage a prison, and children a burden she did not desire to bear. What need had she for these things? What use for them? She would be married to her blade, comforted by her cold hate, with righteous vengeance as her only child.

"A girl knows the spot," her mentor said, pulling her from her grim meditations. "A girl knows the words. As long as a girl has her hands, she will be able to defend herself, even against a much larger foe. Even when completely disarmed." He seemed satisfied and he shrugged his jerkin over his blouse and made to leave her. Before he could rise from the bench, she placed her hand lightly on his knee, an unspoken request for him to tarry a little longer here with her. He turned his expectant gaze upon her, awaiting her words.

"Why did you lie to the Kindly Man?"

His expression remained mild and he said, "A man never lies to his master."

She bit her lip, certain of the truth of what she had seen in the courtyard, and what she had _seen_ was his _lie_.

"That may have been true before… before your walk in the garden," she almost whispered, mindful of his previous warning about _not speaking of this thing._

"What does a girl think she knows?" her master quizzed, seeming truly confused.

"He asked you…" She hesitated here, wanting to have her answer but not wishing to anger her mentor either with a reminder of the fact that she had listened to his conversation with the principal elder against his express wishes or the fact that she _was_ speaking of this thing, also against his express wishes.

The assassin clutched the back of her neck, pulling her head to him, bowing it as he placed his mouth just over her ear, growling, "What did your _Kindly Man_ ask your master?"

The girl's whisper was tremulous, vibrating with her rapid pulse as she recalled her master's very recent displeasure with her, and she answered, "He asked you why you allowed me to call you _Jaqen_."

Her master released her neck and his look was amused when she turned her face upward and regarded him, awaiting his explanation. Instead of satisfaction, however, she received a question.

"Why does a girl think a man's answer was a lie in this instance?"

The Cat's face was troubled as she considered his query and weighed the advantage she would have by obediently answering it against the one she would have if she chose instead _not_ to reveal what she had seen as she rested on the high branch of the tree, looking down upon the two men in the garden.

She opted to keep her secrets and said to him, "I don't _think_ you lied. I _know_ you did."

He raised his eyebrows at her, his expression thankfully one of tolerance of her rebuff rather than fury at it. He shrugged at her, looking almost bored as he repeated that he never lied to his master, not since he was a very small boy only just arrived at the temple.

 _He had lied again_.

"A man does not make a habit of this behavior," he emphasized, then he gave the girl a meaningful glance, as if adding the unspoken words that would essentially mean something akin to _unlike some apprentices a man could name._

She pursed her lips and stared at him, hard. He met her ridiculous attempt to intimidate him with a cocky expression that belied the turmoil he felt inside. He did not, in fact, make a habit of lying to his master. Until that walk in the garden, he had only ever told the elder one lie, and that was as a tender boy of five who insisted he was not scared of a thing he had to do when, in fact, he was. At the time, it was not a difficult thing for his master to spy his falsehood, as he was not yet learned in the art of deception. He likely had even cast his eyes down and shuffled one little foot back and forth in front of himself as he insisted that he wasn't frightened, though, in truth, it was so long ago that he no longer recalled the details of the incident. Now, when he was pressed to tell half-truths or outright fabrications, he did not cast his eyes to the ground in shame like a green boy. He _had_ actually believed that he didn't do _anything_ that might be read as an indication of deceit so the fact that his lovely girl had seen something that gave his lie away was troubling. His own master was not aware of it, of that he was certain, but likely because Jaqen _had_ always been truthful with him, not exposing whatever this visible sign was to the elder to be studied and cataloged but also because the Lorathi had engendered a great degree of trust over the years.

When her mentor did not offer her the elucidation she sought, the girl gave up for the moment and sighed as she rose from the bench, saying, "I'm meant to be serving in the temple." Jaqen nodded his dismissal and she swept from the room, destined for her cell where she would change into her black and white robe. Her braid was swinging at her back as she burst violently through the door and into the long corridor in a show of displeasure at her master’s unwillingness to answer her question.

But how could he?

The Lorathi had arrived at the House of Black and White so very long ago, and he had been so young at the time, that he could no longer remember what name his parents had given him. It had been easy for him to leave his past behind and become _no one_ , adopting each new face, each new persona, each new name as easily as another might change his breeches. _More easily, even._ It made him particularly effective in his assignments, never raising suspicion, never feeding the doubts of those whose trust he was required to earn in order to complete the work of the Many-Faced god. With his utter mastery of _facelessness_ , his victims had freely succumbed to his will, and the will of Him of Many Faces. A most cherished lover, privy to a queen's secrets and desires; a trusted maester, with access to all parts of a great household; a valued friend, a dangerous criminal, a novice, a household guard, a foot soldier; all these he had been and could be again without raising the least suspicion of his legitimacy.

He had taken the name _Jaqen H'ghar_ when he entered the black cells below the Red Keep. It was a name that called back to his Lorathi heritage; a heritage he did not remember but whose authenticity he wore in the features of his true visage. Why he chose to wear his own face just then, he did not know. It may have been that he felt the strain of that particular assignment more deeply. It was a very long and involved mission which required that he spend a great deal of time shackled with two stinking brutes, both in the black cells and then on the King's Road with the Night's Watch and their pitiful recruits. Concentrating on his face was an easy sacrifice to make when it really would not make a difference in the accomplishment of the order's goals. It seemed a small thing at the time, his own face so meaningless to him that it was no different than any other mask he might have chosen. It was only later that he would wonder if it were part of some greater plan of his god. The hair dye was meant to play upon his own natural white forelock, disguising it in plain sight. He was no more attached to the ridiculous red and white hair or the name he conjured from the air than he was to the straw he sat upon in the back of the locked wagon which Yoren drove along the King's Road.

The assassin had changed his name so frequently and had lived as so many men that the name _Jaqen H'ghar_ was nothing to him; it was _less_ than nothing, actually. It was not until he spoke it to a girl and saw in her stormy eyes that she accepted that name as verity that he realized it was indeed _something_ to him. When Arya looked into his true face and _knew_ him, when she believed him to be _Jaqen,_ he found that he was suddenly very much attached to the name he had chosen for himself. The force of this abrupt emergence of identity pressed on him and he tried to dispel it even as he sensed he was embracing it. He would treat her more casually than he felt but then show her a deference that was not in accordance with their respective stations. He knew he should attempt to break the hold this one little girl had over him but he sought only to strengthen it. He offered to her the deaths the Red god was owed even though it was not required of him. It was true that the Red god would have his due, but how the deaths came was of no consequence. It was Jaqen who had _made_ it consequential. He shooed her away and ignored her at times, only to find himself drawn to her and seeking out her company at other times. Later, when his clever girl schemed to extort his aid, planning to force him to do her will lest she leave him selected and marked for death, she had whispered _Jaqen H'ghar_ in his ear, naming him. _Branding_ him.

He had later told her _Jaqen H'ghar_ was dead as he donned a false face, but this was merely to show her the power that she, too, could have if she would only use the iron coin he had gifted her. To be _Arya Stark_ was a special thing, to be sure, but the power to be _anyone_ was something else entirely. It was a shameless bribe; an allurement he hoped a captive child could not resist. _Jaqen is as dead as Arry_ , he had told her, but it was a lie. She accepted his deceit with the belief a child will have in someone admired; someone trusted. But when he spoke the false words to the apprentice he _chose_ for himself _,_ what his heart had known and his mind was slowly beginning to understand was that _Jaqen H'ghar_ had not died; he had only just been born.

These were things he could not now say to a girl, nor his master. How could he reveal this sacrilege to the principal elder or answer the little Cat's question? These were things he barely allowed himself to ponder even as he held the truth of them deeply, their veracity undeniable.

Arya had spoken a name and it became his, undoing a lifetime of easy anonymity. Inside of him now, there undeniably existed a grain of selfhood that could never be destroyed. Whatever else he might become, whoever his service might call him to be, wherever he might be sent, always inside of him now there lived _Jaqen H'ghar_ , and Jaqen H'ghar belonged only to his lovely girl.


	25. Chapter 25

The temple was not as quiet today as the Cat normally found it. Most of the people who came in to weep at the feet of one or another of the statues in the House of Black and White did it early in the morning before the dawn broke or late at night, so it was disconcerting to hear a woman's soft sobs echoing around the chamber in the mid-morning hours when the sun was still climbing. The sound was emanating, appropriately enough, from the marbled feet of the Weeping Woman, where a slight form knelt, her head bent, her face pressed against the cool marble of the statue, bathing it with her tears. The Cat slipped silently past her to attend to her duties, the soft leather soles of her slippers making no noise which might disturb the despondent woman.

The acolyte drifted soundlessly around the temple, collecting offerings and replacing or relighting the candles which had burned too low or extinguished themselves. As she moved through the nearly abandoned corridors and wide open space of the main temple chamber, she longed to execute a few of the tumbling moves she had been practicing over the last few weeks, copied from the rat-faced boy. She dared not succumb to the urge with a worshiper in the temple, however. It would not be… _seemly._ She also recognized that if the Kindly Man crept in and caught her, he would surely not approve, and his disapproval could result in particularly unpleasant consequences. Besides, giving in to this whim would violate a particular instruction which the elder seemed to be emphasizing more and more of late.

_You must learn to serve in stillness._

Almost as if he had been called from the mists by her thoughts of him, the principal elder appeared at the side of the sobbing figure, placing a hand gently on her back and speaking in low tones with her. After a few moments, during which he seemed to comfort her and she seemed to calm herself, the Kindly Man helped the woman rise to her feet and they walked arm-in-arm to the dark fountain in the center of the temple. The Cat watched as they approached the still waters, but when the woman sat on the ledge of the pool and the Kindly Man produced a cup ( _Where had that been?_ the girl wondered. _Does he keep them hidden in his sleeves?_ ) which he then handed to the forlorn woman, the acolyte turned away in distaste. It wasn't that she was bothered by death; not in the least. She had witnessed far too much of it for it to hold any discomfort for her, enduring its sting time and time again, even causing her fair share. Death held no horrors for her any longer. She found it difficult, though, to watch someone invite it; someone who had a choice between laying down and giving up or living and fighting on and yet chose _wrong._ In witnessing these things, there was no terror or sadness for the apprentice, only bewilderment. This loss of will, this weak succumbing, this lack of passion only baffled her and the Cat did not like to feel confused.

_There is only one thing we say to Death: not today._

The girl wandered down one of the wide passageways which radiated from the main temple chamber and retreated into an alcove, the furthest one from the pool. She waited there to give the dark waters time to do their work. The corpse would need to be removed from the area around the pool and taken to the chambers below. It was her job to do this, and to strip the body of anything useful, but the acolyte had no want to take a dying woman before her time.

Thinking on the task ahead of her, the Cat sighed and turned, finding herself staring into the veiled face of the Stranger. The obscured countenance of the likeness brought to mind her discarded widow's disguise. Her mouth curved into a small smile at the thought, remembering how she had poisoned the beautiful maid's figs while wearing the dark clothes and veil. She had unintentionally dressed as the Stranger to usher another to the Stranger's side.

 _If you believed in all that_ , she thought wryly, her smile growing.

"I have seen many people visit this spot," the Kindly Man's placid voice started from just beyond the girl's right shoulder, "but I do not believe I have ever seen any of them _smile_." As soon as she heard the elder speak, the small smile died on her lips and as she turned to him, her expression was not amused any longer but rather radiated a practiced respect and sympathy (her _temple_ face, as she had come to think of it).

"I was just thinking that the Stranger and I have much in common," the girl remarked, inclining her head slightly to the imposing statue with seeming reverence.

"Do not confuse service to the Many-Faced god and giving the gift of death with governing the dead, child," the man chided her gently as he regarded the pale, veiled figure before them. "A simple matter of costuming does not make you more like _him_."

Though the apprentice could not know it, even her own mother had seen that her youngest daughter, her fierce wolf-child, was much more like another of the Seven than the Stranger. The Cat might have fancied in herself a kinship with the most frightening of the Seven, but the devout daughter of Hoster Tully had glimpsed her wild girl's serious Stark features through the smoke trailing from a torch, clouding a ruined sept and stinging her eyes. She found the girl's face in the crudely rendered drawing of the Warrior, a visage she came upon in the sept of an abandoned village she had visited when treating in the name of her son, Robb Stark, the King in the North. Arya's mother had tried in vain to make a peace with Renly Baratheon, the one among the five kings with the most of summer in him. At the time, Lady Stark was recently widowed, grieving her husband, distracted with doing her part to guarantee the safety of her sons, and feeling the absences of her daughters acutely. The mother had not the time to spare much thought for what her vision might mean but had seen the truth of her daughter's destiny nonetheless. Arya had more of the Warrior in her than any of the other faces of the Seven but it was so very long ago and the youngest Stark girl had not been there, so the observation passed from all knowledge with her mother's murder.

If the Kindly Man was inclined to agree with Catelyn Stark's vision, he did not say so but instead commented on the girl's judgment of the woman who now lay dying on the ledge of the fountain just down the corridor from where they stood.

"Why do you flee from death, child?"

"I'm not fleeing from _death_ ," she corrected him. "I just don't understand it, is all."

"Valar morghulis," the elder reminded her gently. "All men must die."

"Yes, but there is no requirement to hasten along the path to your own death!" she insisted, frowning with distaste at the very idea. Since even before the end of her idyllic life at Winterfell, Arya had only ever known what it meant to stand and fight; in her play; in her willful disobedience of her Septa; in her tousling with her many brothers. Her natural drive to fight was only sharpened by all that came after her family was separated by her father's sense of duty and loyalty to his friend and king.

"No reason to hasten along the path to death?" the elder mused. "Some might see the choices the Cat makes and say the same thing."

This stopped her short, wondering to which choices the Kindly Man referred. Jaqen had been warning her all along that some of the things she had done were dangerous and seemed to be drawing her down a path where she might meet with the end of the principal elder's patience. He had more than hinted that a consequence of that could be her own end but she felt reasonably confident that either the Kindly Man was more tolerant of her behavior than her master was inclined to believe or that he was indeed unaware of the things which might have otherwise earned his ire. But, here was this cryptic observation, just specific enough to worry her but not specific enough to give her a clue as to the direction her worry should take.

Knowing that in these cases, it was best to hold her tongue and try very hard to remain unreadable, she merely raised her eyebrows as if inviting the elder to expand on his comments but showed no other reaction and remained silent. It was a ploy that never worked for her, only, this time, it _did_.

"You cannot be an acolyte forever," he told her gravely. "In time, each apprentice will become a master. You must be wary along your path toward facelessness so that you do not put your trust in the wrong places and spend your faith on the wrong people. If you are not careful, you will find that you have been led astray and have reached a point where you can no longer achieve your aim."

This surprised her, though she fought valiantly not to show it. She thought he might admonish her for listening in on conversations not meant for her ears or for hearing news of her family and responding as Arya Stark would rather than with the tolerance and detachment of _no one._ She thought he would berate her for having her wolf dreams, citing them as proof that she had not managed to give up herself fully to Him of Many Faces, but instead, he was warning her about trusting too readily. Yet, life had taught the Cat _never_ to trust and it was a lesson she had learned well. She simply did not, _could not,_ trust. There was no one she exempted from her deep seated suspicion and wariness.

Well, no one but her master and her half-brother ( _he was still alive, she was certain_ ). Was the Kindly Man telling her that she could not trust _Jaqen_? But that was ridiculous! She must have misunderstood him. She meant to think on the elder's words and decipher their true meaning later because the very idea that she could not trust her own master was… unfathomable.

_Do you trust a man?_

_I trust you more than I trust any man alive._

She remembered the words she had exchanged with Jaqen over honeyed chicken and fought the urge to bite her lip as she considered the nature of their trust. She had no desire to give the Kindly Man cause to slap her and nothing seemed to draw his ire like that particular nervous habit. She packed the elder's strange words away in the corner of her mind where she was piling the things that begged for more consideration and merely nodded at the man, showing she had heard his words.

The elder turned slightly away from her, peering down the corridor into the gloom of the temple and sighed, saying, "I believe you are needed by the pool."

The Cat seized upon the opportunity to make her escape, saying a quick, "Valar morghulis," to the Kindly Man and then darting toward the serene fountain to retrieve the once-sobbing woman, now silent and still, merely a shell from which life had fled before the irresistible press of the poisoned water.

She found the woman collapsed by the pool and could see that she would be able to easily lift her small frame, hoisting her over her shoulder to carry her down below to do her required work. As she rolled the corpse into a position for lifting, the acolyte was surprised to see that the departed was young, her face very beautiful. She had assumed the woman to be old and sickly or at the very least, disfigured and carrying some visible evidence of a disadvantage to explain her arrival here in the temple and her craving for the gift she sought. What reason could a fair woman in her prime have to give up on life? Even with her slack mouth and fading color, the Cat could tell that she was almost of an age with the woman who appeared to be even younger than the curly-headed maid the Cat had dispatched with her tainted fruit not so long ago.

The memory of that assignment called up something in her mind's eye. She leaned closer to the dead girl, studying her face in the dim light thrown by the candles and torches in the sanctum. _Yes, she could see it now. The dark curls, almost raven-black; the soft doe eyes; the apple cheeks… Sisters? This one the younger? It had to be; the resemblance was too strong to be merely coincidence._

That gave her pause as she considered the likely scenario. A dear sister, dead of a mysterious ailment, a sudden illness perhaps, and the grief too much to bear. The Cat wrinkled her nose, looking into the girl's lax face, her worries no longer creasing her brow, her tears no longer flowing. She was at peace, the Cat supposed, but she could not avenge her sister. She could only join her in the Nightlands. _Of all the bloody stupid craven ways to react to the death of your family…_

She thought of Sansa as she hoisted the small woman, throwing the corpse over her shoulders with a grunt, and imagined what she would feel if she found out that her only sister had been killed. She knew that in reality, this was a likely scenario and if the acolyte were ever sent to Westeros on the business of the Many-Faced god, it was entirely possible that she would receive the same news that this formerly sobbing woman had received. The Cat tried to imagine herself swallowing down poison, willingly, in response to such a tragedy and she could not. She loved Sansa. She _did_. But that was exactly why she would not join her sister either at the feet of the old gods or in one of the Seven heavens or in the Nightlands or moldering in a tomb. She loved her sister enough to _act_. Blood and steel. That was the only correct answer. That was the only acceptable response to death.

Daggers pushed through the sides of necks or stuck into hearts and twisted; swords, two of them, parting shoulders from heads and cleaving men in two; poison strangling traitors at feasts; her own small hands, perhaps aided by a knee, crushing a throat; all these she considered using against her sister's imagined killer or killers as she made her way to the dark cells below the temple to commandeer anything usable from the cold woman resting on her shoulder.

As she removed the girl's clothes (with no Jaqen around to witness just how deftly her fingers worked clasps and laces, of course), her thoughts took a natural turn from her own imagined vengeance against her sister's fictitious murderers to her very real anger against her brother's betrayers. She wasn't sure how she would get to the Wall, or when, but she had added it to her list. With Ser Gregor, Dunsen, and Raff no longer demanding her energy, she found herself with some time available for wishing death upon a new set of offenders. That she was not sure which of the black brothers were responsible was of little consequence.

… _death will come. On the morrow, at the turn of the moon, a year from this day, it will come. A man does not fly like a bird, but one foot moves and then another and one day a man is there…_

She remembered her master's words, spoken as a promise in the godswood at Harrenhal. Jaqen had been vowing to kill the king, if she was so inclined to name Joffrey, but there was a greater lesson to be had, if only a girl had the ears to listen and the mind to understand. There was an inevitability about death ( _valar morghulis_ ) but a vow to be the giver of that gift was sacred; unbreakable. The power to deliver a man to his end, to take from him his breath and stop his beating heart, was bestowed by the god of this temple upon his chosen; the power of death, and nothing more. All else a girl might claim to possess, she found elsewhere.

Mercy was for the Mother but Arya was no soft and pitying thing. She was not completely devoid of compassion, but she would spare none of it for those who had harmed her and hers. No, she did not carry the Mother within her; rather, she was the Warrior, the pitiless instrument of Him of Many Faces, and the cold vengeance of the old gods, her hatred relentless, her memory long, her impulsion savage.

The name "Satin" emerged in her thoughts and she remembered her mentor's tale of the escaped squire from Castle Black, now riding with the brotherhood at her mother's command. _He_ would know who was responsible for betraying Jon. That she knew with a certainty that her brother still lived mattered not—betrayal was betrayal and with no Starks but herself left to exact justice (she could hardly imagine Sansa riding to Jon's defense, in any case, assuming she was still alive), it fell to her. She did not wonder at Jon's feelings on the matter, not caring that he might have taken his own revenge but had not. That was not Jon's way—he was too much like their father. Honor was his strength _and_ his weakness, as it had been Lord Eddard's. He was not capable of pure revenge. She frowned a bit as she folded the underskirt she had removed from the apple-cheeked girl and thought how strange it was that she felt no shame that her disposition varied so extremely from those exhibited by the great men in her life. Her father would not approve of her revenge scheme, she was sure, and Jon might _understand_ it, but he would not condone it. Even Jaqen would say that she was being selfish and selfishness had no place among the Faceless Men.

 _Service to the Many-Faced god means a man's own_ _purposes are the same as the order's._

"Men are stupid," she mumbled to herself. How could exacting justice ever be wrong? How could avenging the wrongs done to your own family be selfishness? How could delivering the gift of death ever offend the Many-Faced god? Was there any greater form of reverence? Was there a more sincere sort of worship? Did their god not bathe in the blood of those delivered to him, their cries sweet perfume in his nose, the tears of the mourning a precious offering of grief to delight him? To do what she felt she _must_ , to visit her righteous anger upon the heads of Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei, the traitorous black brothers, and any others who may have harmed those she loved, was not a selfish act, she was quite convinced.

It was a _holy_ one.

The Cat was preparing to drag the naked corpse deeper into the House of Black and White, to the lowest and darkest level where she could release the apple-cheeked girl to the murky depths of the canal bordering the north wall of the temple which wended its way to the bay. From there, the tides would deliver the corpse to the sea, at least whatever parts of it were not consumed by the giant eels that lived on the muddy canal floor, feeding off the remains of the bereft and hopeless the Cat gifted to them, growing ever fatter and larger. She had once seen an eel rise smoothly to the surface and snap the head from a body that had been sent through the chute into the canal. She had never realized what powerful jaws and long, sharp teeth eels had until she saw one of them sever the neck of that corpse with a single bite.

 _Another young bride for the drowned god,_ some Northern part of her thought with disdain, contemptuous of both the weakness of a sister who could not stand and fight for her blood as well as of the god of the Iron Islands. _I hope the drowned god doesn't mind his women a bit chewed, the eels haven't been fed in a few days._

Before the Cat had managed to hoist the girl once again to her shoulders, she felt a slight change in the temperature in the room, a small shift in the room's pressure, and whirled around to see one of the Faceless masters (the one she thought of as _the handsome man_ ) entering the chamber silently. His comely face was expressionless as he nodded to her and spoke the typical greeting of the temple.

"Valar dohaeris," the Cat responded.

"I have come for the woman," he told her simply in the tongue of Braavos.

"Why?" the girl asked automatically, receiving a reproving look from the master for her impertinence, but he answered her nonetheless.

"Her face has value," the Faceless Man told her.

The Cat knew that this meant the girl's visage was destined to be added to the repository. She nodded and stepped away from the corpse, allowing the handsome man to approach the apple-cheeked girl and lift her into his arms. He nodded to the acolyte and turned to leave the chamber but then stopped and spoke without turning back to face her.

"My brother is most worried about you, little wolf," he said and she could not tell if it was a warning or merely an observation. The handsome man swept noiselessly from the room without saying more.

_Why was his brother worried? And which brother had he meant?_

 

* * *

 

The girl entered the large dining hall for the supper that night still wearing her long, cowled robe which marked her as a member of the order, but her mind was far outside of the temple as she seated herself for the meal. Loric stood in the corner, ready to serve, grinning as ever despite a split, bloodied lip. She frowned at his abused face but said nothing as she accepted the lemon water he offered her (it was a deliberate kindness on the boy's part; he had heard of her sudden distaste for red wine, which was the other beverage being served that night).

"A drunken sailor caught me listening to his conversation," the young acolyte revealed unbidden, even his whisper sounding happy to the Cat's ear, "but I learned three new things, anyway!"

She wondered what he had learned that was worth a fist to the mouth, but knowing Loric, he was just happy to have completed an assignment, regardless of the quality of the information he had brought back to the Kindly Man.

As the boy practically skipped back to his corner, the Cat's mind drifted to her previous thoughts, mostly surrounding Nymeria. It was strange for the direwolf to be so prominent in the girl's mind without there having been a recent dream, but she had crossed paths with the black and white cat who wandered the temple (a fine mouser, that one) on the way to the dining hall and for some reason, seeing that small animal had brought to mind a much larger one. She had wondered where her wolf might be as she bent to stroke the cat's silken fur, earning a small nip on the hand just before the tom brushed around her legs, his arched back leaving a few small tufts of fur clinging to the hem of the girl's soft robe.

"Do you know where she is, little cat?" the girl asked the animal softly as she thought of her wolf leading a large pack of her cousins to better hunting grounds, and the cat trilled faintly, then purred as he circled the girl's legs once more, earning himself a scratch behind his ears. Satisfied with the attention he had received, he nipped once more at the girl's hand and then sauntered off, his tail curling lazily at the tip, and if he knew of Nymeria's whereabouts, he certainly wasn't saying.

At table, the question continued to plague the Cat. As the cordial murmurs of conversation surrounded her, the girl took a bite of her warm bread and stared into the flame of the candle sitting directly before her, casting its glow on the platters and bowls of food lining the center of the table. She found herself wondering if she might glimpse the answer she sought as a Red priest would. Her focus softened and the small flame flickered and danced with the movements of her brothers nearby, the inconstant placement of the fire creating burning shapes before her eyes. Her chewing slowed and then stopped as she stared and stared. Slowly, an image emerged and the girl saw a ruined face and in it, eyes that burned with hate like hot coals. She recognized the dark sentiment; it reflected her own too closely. The face faded from her vision then and she saw a tattered cloak and a hammer and noose, a fine longsword with a distinctive hilt, and a greybeard missing a finger, his features indistinct and his wrists shackled. The silver chain connecting the cuffs was broken. And then she saw _Nymeria_ , her coat shimmering in the moonlight like ice in the harsh daylight of winter. She could not tell where the wolf was, but she was moving, ever moving, and the girl could _feel_ her movement, carrying her eastward. Always to the east.

The image dissolved as a hand passed over the flame before her eyes, extinguishing it. Across the table from the Cat, her master had taken a seat, and his bronze eyes burned brighter than a thousand candles as she looked into them. His expression remained neutral and he did not speak, but she understood him anyway and sat up a little taller in her chair, suddenly voracious, attacking her lamb chop, her eyes cast down upon the platter before her.

"Tell us, brother," the waif began in High Valyrian, addressing Jaqen, drawing his attention away from Arya as the tiny woman brought him into her conversation with the handsome man, the little lordling, and the principal elder, "what is _your_ opinion on these dragons in Dorne? After all, you are the only one to have seen them. What do they plan?"

The Lorathi seemed reluctant to discuss the subject at table and his apprentice could fairly imagine his thoughts, knowing he would likely prefer to have this conversation in council chambers and away from the curious ears of the acolytes (one in particular), but he answered anyway, though tersely.

"A man believes they plan to do what dragons have always done."

There was a quiet that fell over the table and all eyes turned to the Cat's master, awaiting his clarification. Shaking his head slightly and sighing, he finally obliged, speaking softly.

"To conquer the land with fire and blood."

"Just so," the handsome man interjected. "They may even have already begun their campaign. Our brother saw them in Dorne nearly a year past. It is difficult to believe they would have been sitting idle all this time."

"No," the Kindly Man disagreed mildly. "While it may be difficult to believe that they have been biding their time patiently in Dorne, it is true nonetheless."

He did not reveal how he knew this but no one disputed his statement. The other masters and priests merely nodding in deference.

 _He knows things,_ the Cat mused to herself, _but how? Does he have a dragonglass candle? Or the gift of sight like the ghost of High Heart? Does he learn of things before they happen, informed by prophetic dreams? Or does the Many-Faced god whisper in his ear as he slowly shuffles through the courtyard garden alone?_

"And once they have Westeros," the waif pressed, "will they turn their eyes toward Essos and the Free Cities?"

Jaqen shrugged and then reminded them that the dragons had already been in Essos, and departed, having lain waste to the slave cities when all attempts at sowing freedom there had not worked. Astapor was only cleansed of the bloody flux once dragonfire had seared it and Yunkai was little more than a pile of cinders now after those who took over command of the city attempted to use their new power to betray their rightful ruler, the conquering queen, and subjugate their Astapori brothers. Only Mereen had survived, and then only after a third of the surviving masters, the strongest and most stringent of Daenerys Targaryen's critics, had been roasted alive by dragonfire in the fighting pits as an example and the surviving slave populations from Yunkai and Astapor had poured through the gates and now outnumbered the former masters one hundred to one.

Those as could be trained to fight and were able bodied were likely in Dorne with their liberator now, following the Dragon Queen and her children across the narrow sea in a fleet of ships so large that they were forced to dock only long enough to put their passengers ashore and then had to sail again out to the sea, making way for the next wave of ships in need of unloading.

"To return here, intent on conquering the Free Cities does not seem a goal of either of the silver dragons," the Lorathi concluded. "There are no slaves to free and this is not their land by rights. A man believes the dragons will stay in the west."

The Kindly Man nodded his agreement and reiterated, "The dragons will not leave Westeros now that they have landed." But it seemed to the Cat that there was a keen look in the elder's eye as he said it which cast doubt on the conviction boasted by his tone. As she watched the Kindly Man declare confidently that the Free Cities had nothing to fear from dragons, he turned his eyes upon her face and observed her closely, his expression inscrutable. She held his gaze, trying futilely to interpret his look and could feel another pair of eyes burning into her from across the table. She did not outwardly acknowledge her master, but she knew his bronze eyes were urging her to tread very carefully.

_My brother is most worried about you, little wolf._

_If you are not careful, you will find that you have been led astray and have reached a point where you can no longer achieve your aim._

_Stupid girl, who do you think your Kindly Man is? What does a girl suppose will happen to her once her Kindly Man has no use for her?_

_The handsome man; the Kindly Man; her master._ All of their words rattled in her head, warring for her acceptance; confusing her as to their objective; demanding her trust. Unsure which way to turn, she gave her attention to her platter and finished her supper, thinking instead of the intentions of dragons and the intentions of those who would use them.

 _How fast do dragons fly_? the girl wondered. _How long would it take a dragon to cover the distance between Dorne and the North?_

 

* * *

 

Long after supper, the Cat tossed and turned upon her soft mattress in the pitch black of her cell, finding that sleep eluded her no matter how fervent her desire for it. The knife and leather strap at her thigh chafed her skin as she rolled over once again, trying to find the position that would most likely result in her pushing her tumultuous thoughts down far enough that she could finally rest. Her mind seized upon one half-formed idea after another, throwing them into the forefront of her meditations in a rotating fashion and depriving her of her sleep she craved. Lady Stoneheart; dragons; the wooden case left at the Meerios Dinast armory; Jon; the final trial; Nymeria; Jaqen's lie to the Kindly Man; Gendry; blood magic; the rat-faced boy's hatred; the familiar doe eyes of the apple-cheeked girl; raking wounds against tanned flesh.

Frustrated, the girl flipped over again, beating her fist against her pillow and growling as the flat hilt of her small throwing knife pressed uncomfortably at her inner thigh. She grasped at it and yanked it from the leather strap, meaning to toss it in the corner in irritation when she felt a slight draft across her cheek.

Instinctively, she bolted upright in her bed, unseeing but knowing where her door was. The knife flew from her fingertips and struck flesh, drawing a muffled cry, followed by a low, grunting curse. She sprang from the bed, landing in a crouch between it and her chair pushed against her far wall. The Cat had thought to roll beneath her bed for shelter until she could scrabble through her doorway and into the corridor. The passage, normally lit, was as dark as the cell itself but she could feel the flow of air drifting in from the passageway and could follow it to her escape. The shuffling of feet, several pairs of them, caused her heart to sink. _Too many_ , _and blocking the path to safety._

The next instant, the girl felt her ankles grasped tightly and she was yanked roughly across the stone floor from beneath her narrow bed, cursing loudly as she scratched at the floor, seeking a grip somewhere but finding none. No words were spoken to her though she could hear the heavy breathing of one of the men, likely the one she had managed to injure. Many sets of hands were working on her, fighting to restrain her as she clawed and bit and resisted with all her considerable strength. One pair worked at binding her wrists behind her while another pair bound her ankles. A third set gagged her and threw a hood over her head ( _Why?_ she wondered wildly. The heavy blackness of the cell had already blinded her).

She could feel herself being hoisted into the air, and she kicked and fought her attackers as much as she could with her ankles and wrists bound and her legs pressed tightly against one of her assailant's chests, pinned by his strong arms. His shoulder dug into her belly, pressing the breath out of her and she stopped her useless movements, thinking to preserve her energy as she forced herself to _think_.

First, she needed to decide if this was part of her training or something more sinister. The masters were renown for taking acolytes unawares and putting them into difficult situations, teaching them to react quickly, to always be ready, and to solve their problems with whatever was available to them. But there were also those among her brothers who spared no love for her and who might possibly wish her harm. And then there were all of the warnings and ominous words that had been directed toward her lately, many from her own master but some from others, including the Kindly Man. She again remembered the handsome man's statement to her from earlier in the day. _My brother is most worried about you, little wolf._ Was _this_ what he meant?

The Cat was adept at slipping bonds, but as she tried the cords at her wrists, she found them so bitingly tight that she was unable to even move her two wrists against each other. She could just wrap the fingers of one hand around the other to feel the top of the rope binding her but her short fingernails could not pick at it effectively.

The footsteps of the one bearing her seemed to slow and then she felt him push through a door and enter a stairwell. They begin descending. The footfalls of his companions echoed above her and seemed to be following her as they descended further and further into the temple, the air becoming cooler and then damper. They finally burst out of the stairwell and into a dank passageway and she knew where they were heading. An icy feeling gripped her gut and she began to struggle in earnest, her angry cries of protest muffled by the gag and hood.

The sudden vehemence of her movements seemed to hasten her attackers' pace and they bustled out of the corridor and into another chamber; the same chamber to which she had intended to bring the apple-cheeked girl before the handsome man had stopped her; the chamber with the square iron door mounted low on the north wall, covering the portal through which the Cat fed the eels. The same iron door whose bolt she now heard scraping across its latch as she felt hands gripping her limbs, forcing her into a horizontal position.

Her bound wrists were unable to reach the one blade left on her body, tucked into a small pocket sewn on the interior of her shift, just inside the neckline, resting uselessly at her breast. She felt the sickening cold of the metal door frame chilling her through the thin material of the shift as she was pushed across it roughly, head first. As more of her body was forced through the port and her shoulders breached the edge of the opening, she felt herself hanging over empty space, gravity working on her and pulling her head toward the canal below. This shift in her posture caused the heavy hood to fall away from her face and then drop down to the murky waters with a gentle flutter that belied the speed her own rapid plunge would have if she did not find a way to stop this. As she was pushed to the point where her wrists were just beyond the opening of the port, she grasped at its edge with her fingers, arresting her slide outward for a brief moment. She bent quickly at the waist, trying to sit up, hoping that if her attackers saw her face, they might relent in their madness. She stared desperately into the gloom of the chamber through the portal, unable to speak, but she saw four figures, all men by their size, wearing their belted robes of black and white, hoods raised around their heads, hiding their faces in deep shadow and protecting their identities. She was shoved harder, her grappling fingers wrenched from the edge they gripped, losing her battle to hold on. As her body moved further out of the small doorway and into the night air, the moon partly broke the clouds and shone weakly through the portal and into the room in which she was fighting to remain. The light was still too dim to pierce the darkness of the cowls and see faces, but as she tilted further downward, she glanced back up at her assailants one last time and thought she could see three healing scratches on the neck of the man whose grip was now all that kept her from plummeting down to the canal.

 _Jaqen?_ the girl thought desperately, her hope creating a thundering surge of joy in her chest, knowing as she did in her bones that her master would never allow any real harm to come to her.

And then all she knew was falling; falling, until she slipped into the murky depths of the canal, the cold water swallowing her whole.


	26. Chapter 26

The mind is capable of having many thoughts almost at once, receiving a multitude of information from the senses and interpreting all of that information simultaneously. A lord may sup at his wedding feast and savor the taste of the roasted boar prepared especially for him even as he enjoys the sound of the music playing over the din of a hundred different conversations and looking at his new, young bride, appreciating her beauty. He may think, "Ah, the gods have blessed me!" and he might mean that he has been blessed with such delicious fare, such soothing sounds or such a comely wife. He might even mean all three at once, because the complexities of the human mind allow for a man to consider things nearly at once or quickly in tandem and pass judgment on them, acting accordingly. If he enjoys the flavor of the boar, he may have another bite. If he is entertained by the song, he may cry out for his guests to dance. If he is enraptured with his new wife, he may lean over and place a kiss upon her mouth, wishing for some drunken guest to bellow about the bedding sooner rather than later.

In this same way, the Cat was receiving information from her senses, considering it all at once, and making judgments about what she should do next. She noted that the canal was deep as she plunged downward, influenced as it was by the tides. High tide must have only just occurred, judging by how far down she sank into the dark depths of the channel. She felt the chill of the tidal water, sensed the amount of air she had filling her lungs, and guessed at the number of eels like to be silently slithering about the muddy bottom of the canal where her toes had only just come to rest. She was having many thoughts at once, like a crowd of voices shouting in her head, while the overarching idea she was trying to push forward was _don't panic_. The rest of the information buzzing through her head was a mixture of notions and considerations, some important, some less so, at least while she was trying to solve the most pressing of her problems, which was that she now likely had just under three minutes until she would start to drown.

Thankfully, she had entered the water feet first despite the fact that the Cat had been shoved through the portal with her head leading the way. At the moment she realized she was going to fall ( _when she realized that her master was going to_ drop _her)_ , the girl called upon her memory of some of her rat-faced brother's acrobatic skills. Just as she slipped easily from the door in the lower wall of the temple toward the canal, she pulled her body into a tight ball, spinning slightly and then unfolding herself with her toes pointing downward just as she struck the water. This made it easier to get her bearings once her descent was arrested by the mucky floor of the canal. With the sort of mad humor that sometimes grips a person in times of great stress, she thought wryly that she had gotten to execute one of the Westerosi boy's moves after all, and in a more appropriate venue than the solemn temple where the idea had first struck her. There, deep below the surface of the water, trying not to waste time with gloating and smiling at her own flawless execution of the aerial tumble, she could feel the long skirt of her shift billowing up around her waist, floating weightlessly around her as she tried to think.

A thick, muscular creature with a slow, curving movement brushed slickly against her bare leg, an action which seemed to suggest that she might have _another_ pressing problem to solve besides how best to avoid drowning. The eels in the bay were mostly of standard size, still very dangerous, but not typically deadly, per se. The eels that found their way into the canal, however… _Those_ creatures fed upon a steady diet of flesh, settling on the muddy bottom of the channel and awaiting their sustenance (provided so conveniently at regular intervals via the iron door through which the girl had just unwillingly exited the temple). In this fashion, they grew quite large. The biggest she had ever seen was as thick around as a large man's thigh, with a mouth full of razor-like teeth, its body covered with shiny black scales that gleamed like polished armor in the sunlight (when it bothered to break the surface of the water to expose its scales to the sun, anyway).

Her thoughts became muddled, stacking one on top of the other, happening all at once. _I can hold my breath for a very long time; don't panic. Gods, Jaqen… don't think about it now. The eels haven't been fed recently. I'm going to kill him. These ropes are too tight, I can't even move my ankles. Maybe I can push up from the bottom and break the surface to get a breath. It's too dark to see anything down here… oh, but I felt that. Don't panic. Eel! Don't panic! THINK! If I could somehow get the knife... There's another one, oh, there are so many! Why? Jaqen…_

The water was beginning to slowly churn around her. She knew the eels would become frenzied if they scented blood, so she cast her thoughts out to the old gods and the new and the Many-Faced god and then, reluctantly, to the drowned god (suddenly feeling very sorry that she had japed about his bride being _chewed),_ begging them to keep her from being bitten by an eel. She knew the appeal was likely useless, but she could not think of else to do at just that second. Praying and beseeching at least served to distract her from the bumping of the eels and the feel of their oily bodies grazing hers. If one of the dangerous creatures had a mind to nip her and broke her skin, it would be the end of her, and a significantly painful, messy, inauspicious end at that.

She tried her wrists again, attempting furiously to pull them apart and loosen the bonds but then felt a rather aggressive bump against her back. The girl turned quickly in the water, her open eyes just glimpsing the suggestion of the shadow of a large eel pushing past her in the small amount of moonlight that pierced the depth of the water, spinning on her toes as best she could with bound ankles. _Don't bite me,_ she thought, directing her will at the eel. She ceased beseeching the gods and turned her prayers toward the hungry lords of the canal. _Don't bite me, don't bite me, don't bite me, don't bite me!_

The girl felt herself slipping into panic as another eel, this one even larger, passed her, caressing her side with his thick body. She fought against the pounding of her heart, willing it to slow, and suppressed the urge to draw in a great, watery breath with which to scream. She strove hard to avoid giving into terror because she knew that if she allowed that to happen, she was lost. If she were not under water, she could have taken a deep breath to calm herself, but as it was, she only had her thoughts for comfort. In that brief space of time she still had before losing herself to hysteria, Syrio's voice came to her.

_Calm as still water._

She nodded almost imperceptibly as if acknowledging Syrio's expertise in the matter of remaining calm. But then, strangely, his words were pushed aside and it was the Kindly Man's voice she heard ringing in her ears.

_When you truly find a moment of stillness, you will learn it is neither life nor death. It is great strength and acute awareness._

_Stillness._

The girl was bumped again by a thick-bodied monster, causing her to rock slightly forward and she struggled to keep her balance. She stared hard, her lungs beginning to burn, trying to watch the eel, seeing if it was going to turn and charge her. As her feet planted themselves firmly in the thick, slimy muck at the canal's floor, she suddenly felt almost weightless, as if she were drifting, moving smoothly, gliding instinctively toward a… almost a _smell._ A smell like… _food_? She pushed forward, just passing the point where the _smell_ , if that's what it was, was strongest, feeling her long, sleek sides caress the warm flesh of the thing she wanted to _eat._ She made a graceful turn in the water, and headed back to where the smell had originated. She _saw_ nothing, but she _sensed_ that it was there. She butted her head against the thing and felt _herself_ , felt her body as it gave a little to the pressure of her great eel head. She passed the long, sleek eel body over the arms pulled back behind her, and knew what she had to do. The eel circled back, its will now belonging to another. She approached herself from behind, her still, lithe form standing upright, trying to hold herself steady against the push and pull of the gentle current and the occasional bumping of the eels against her legs.

The jaws of the eel opened wide, sharp teeth like tiny knives lining the mouth, and clamped down hard near the bound hands. The jaws locked and the great head of the monster began to shake, tossing the girl's body back and forth in the hazy water, deep below the canal's surface. Suddenly, the girl's hands burst free from their constraints and the eel bumped the her on her bottom, giving her some momentum to pull herself up and burst through the surface of the black waters. When the Cat felt the cool of the night air on her face, she ripped off her gag and drew in several great, gasping breaths. She reached inside of her sodden, clinging shift and found her small knife, using it to swiftly cut the ropes from her ankles. As the bindings fell free and drifted down to rest on the bottom of the canal, she heard a small splash behind her and spun her body around in the water, her back now toward the bank of the canal nearest her temple. She saw another of the large eels, it's blind eyes not seeing her but not needing too. It slithered just beneath the calm surface of the water with a speed that was unbelievable for such a large creature, it's mouth open and seeking its meal; _her_.

 _Don't panic. Don't let it break your skin,_ the girl thought. Newly invigorated by the gulps of sweet Braavosi air and the feel of the small, steel blade in her hand, she knew what she must do.

The Cat raised her knife and as the eel neared her, it's large jaw seemed to swing open even wider. The thing seemed to be preparing to clamp onto her shoulder. At the last second, the Cat dropped below the surface, sliding beneath the monstrous eel and jamming her knife upwards towards the thing's trunk, sinking her blade into its great, scaled belly. When she had buried the blade to the hilt, she drug it through the thrashing eel lengthwise, creating a large, ragged slit which began to leak guts and blood into the water around her. The girl then clenched her blade between her teeth and pulled herself with all her strength away from the carnage, using long, even strokes, knowing that within seconds, every eel in the canal would be swarming this area, looking for a meal. As she swam away from the dying eel with speed, she felt many of his brothers, large and small, brushing past her, drawn to the blood. She swam in the direction of the south bay, thinking as she did, _I am not your meal. Keep moving._

Her thoughts flickered back and forth as she swam, thinking of how hungry she was, thinking she must swim further to eat, and then thinking, _Seven Hells, what are you on about? Just get out of this bloody canal!_

When she felt certain she was clear of danger, she swam toward the near side of the canal, grabbing at the long grasses and cat o' nine tails she found there, using them to hoist herself up the muddy bank and onto dry land. She lay on the grassy strip lining the bank for a long time, panting, not thinking of anything except how glad she was that she was not being digested inside of several eels at that precise moment. Her hair splayed out all around her, loose and tangling into into wet ropes, dripping into the grass. She thought she must have lost the leather tie that held her braid together in the canal. After a while, she sat up and began to scrape the canal muck from her feet, only partially succeeding. She reasoned that the barefoot walk back to the temple would remove the rest, only, she wasn't so sure she should return to the temple just then.

_What just happened?_

Her mind seemed to explode into every direction at once and she willed herself to be _still._ The girl pulled her legs underneath her, the soaked shift nearly transparent as it stuck to her skin, and sat with her palms flatly pressing the tops of her thighs. She gazed out at the deceptively placid waters of the canal, enveloped by the quiet of the Isle of the Gods and the darkness of the cloudy night. She could not stay there forever, she knew, kneeling on the bank of the canal. She must decide what to do.

 _What to do very much depends on what that was,_ she reasoned. _It could have been a test, but of what?_

The strength of the bonds was such that she could have no hope of slipping them, so it was not a test of that particular skill. The position in which she was bound made any sort of attempt to swim to safety so difficult as to be impossible. Though everyone in the temple knew she always had a knife or three on her person, her arms being bound behind her would make accessing _any_ of them unlikely (and, of course, she had left one of her blades _in_ one of her attackers). So, what? A murder attempt? It certainly felt that way, though it made no sense. Who would want her dead? Or, rather, who would want her dead badly enough that they would be willing to risk the ire of the Kindly Man and her master?

_Her master._

She paused, swallowing hard. When she had looked back through the open door of the portal and glimpsed the men in their black and white robes preparing to drop her into the water, she had felt sure she had seen those familiar scratches on the neck of one of her attackers, but now, she wasn't so certain. It had happened very quickly, and the light was certainly poor . She also could not forget that she in an excitable state at the time. Could she have been mistaken? But the pounding in her chest and the knot in her gut told her that she would have to find out for sure. The girl could not accept that Jaqen would harm her but she thought perhaps there might be some other explanation she was missing. She had to speak to him.

The apprentice rose from the grass, brushing futilely at the mud caking her shift where her knees had pressed it through the grass and into the dirt. She walked to the cobblestone lane that ran like a grey ribbon around the isle and followed it home.

* * *

 

The courtyard garden was quiet as the Cat dropped over the wall in a spot that was becoming familiar to her. Her walk back to the temple had partially dried her shift, but it was still very damp and hung heavily, the dirty hem and skirt slapping her legs as she walked. Her hair was still dripping a little, hanging all around her shoulders and sticking wetly to her neck and back. The girl had originally considered bursting through the weirwood and ebony doors of the place, calling angrily for her master to come out and explain himself to her, but she thought the better of it during her walk to the temple and decided to use a stealthier approach.

The bedraggled acolyte flew silently down the dark stone path winding through the garden and let herself in through the back door which led to the kitchen. The place was as quiet as death and she did her best not to disturb the silence, slipping quickly through the corridors and down the stairwell to the second level, where Jaqen's cell was located. She wondered if she would even find him in it. If her _adventures_ had been some sort of order-sanctioned test of her skills, there would likely be a master (possibly hers) awaiting her return in the main temple chamber while the rest of them gathered in the council chambers where, as an acolyte, she was not allowed to enter. But if she found her master in his _own_ chamber, that likely meant he had perpetrated this misdeed of his own volition or else was not involved with it at all. As much as she wanted to believe that was true, that Jaqen had not abducted her from her own bed (well, from _under_ it, anyway), tied her up, and thrown her to a school of monstrous eels, she kept seeing those wounds on his neck and doubt crept in.

_You must be wary along your path toward facelessness so that you do not put your trust in the wrong places and your faith in the wrong people._

When the Kindly Man had uttered those words, she had felt that he could not mean her master. To say that _Jaqen_ was the wrong person in which to place her faith had seemed preposterous to her. But that was before she had been shoved through a portal into a murky, eel-infested canal with her hands and feet bound and her mouth gagged.

As the Cat crept up to her master's door, she thought of all the possible explanations he might give her. _That she hoped he would give her_. The most likely would be that this was a test, ordered by the elders, and that he was there the whole time, confident that she could meet the challenge but prepared to dive in after her if need be. She would still be understandably upset, she decided, but she would see that it was not his fault and that she was never in any real danger. He might also say that it was some trick of her brothers, some ancient initiation ritual of the order, meant to make her realize that she could always count on herself and the skills she had learned here, beneath the roof of the House of Black and White. And, of course, that he was always there, prepared to dive in the whole time and rescue her, if need be. He might even say that he had done it as a punishment for her many transgressions, to teach her that there are consequences when an apprentice flagrantly disobeys the orders of her masters and elders, but that he was there, the whole time, ready to dive in after her if need be.

What she _feared_ , however, was that he would say nothing; that she would walk through his door and into his cell and he would stare back at her with disbelief and then disappointment, aghast that she was still alive. She steeled herself with a deep breath, drawing her lips together in a hard line, and pushed quickly and quietly through her master's door.

His cell had a small window high on the far wall, and though the clouds mostly hid the moon from sight, a small amount of the soft light filtered through the window, allowing her to see the faintest outline of the furniture scattered around the room. Against the far wall, directly under the window, was the bed. The Cat could see the shadowed figure of a sleeping man atop the mattress. She plucked the knife from the small, secret pocket of her shift and gripped it tightly in her left hand, her right hand feeling the air in front of her, in an effort to prevent her from banging into anything that might wake her master. She crept slowly toward the still figure, barely daring to breathe, her skin tingling with apprehension as she neared the sleeping form of the Lorathi. The girl arrived at the bed, the front of her damp shift brushing against the side of the mattress, and meant to lower her dagger to her master's throat and then wake him gently, demanding her answers.

Instead, she found herself roughly yanked down and flipped over in one swift move, her back pressed into the mattress, her instinctively uttered cry muffled by a hand over her mouth. Her master's grip on her wrist forced the knife from her hand in the way he had taught her and the blade fell with a dull thud against the soft blanket. His right hand continued pinning her left wrist to the mattress and her right arm was restrained by his left elbow, his left hand staying firmly clamped over her mouth. The Cat felt Jaqen's warm breath against her cheek, and then she detected his faint whisper as he uttered a phrase that she did not know but thought sounded like it might be in the language of Asshai. An abbreviated hiss emanated from the side of the bed closest to the door before the candle on the small table at her master's bedside come to life, throwing out its warm light into the chamber. Jaqen's face came into focus, hovering inches above her own.

"To what does a man owe such a pleasure?" the assassin asked, his voice still heavy with sleep but his eyes strangely bright. "It is not every day that a beautiful girl comes to his cell to wake him, though the dagger was hardly necessary."

The Cat breathed heavily through her nose but was unable to answer him with his hand firmly covering her mouth. Jaqen's body was tangled in his sheet and blanket but his hard, bare belly was pressed heavily against her own, the damp shift warming between them.

"A girl is wet," he noted, glancing at the clinging shift. "Did you take a bath? It is customary to remove the clothing first, lovely girl. But then, a man knows you have lately struggled with the skills involving the removal of clothes."

His apprentice gave a short, angry snort, signaling her irritation. He narrowed his bronze eyes slightly as he stared into the stormy grey of her own, then set his mouth in a frown and spoke again, his tone no longer suggestive of a jest.

"A man will remove his hand and a girl will speak softly and explain herself, yes?"

She narrowed her eyes in a reflection of his own expression but then gave him a stiff nod. He pulled his hand away from her mouth slightly but kept his apprentice's arms restrained, seemingly not in the mood to chance a tiny fist striking his face. She glared at him, her mind full of anger and confusion and no small amount of fear, and tried to read his face; his eyes. She could find no answer there, so she simply asked what it was that she wanted to know.

"Why did you throw me into the canal, Jaqen?" she said after a moment, sounding bitter.

Her master cocked his head, his white forelock brushing against her ear as he did, tickling her, and she had to suppress the flinch and giggle that rose up in her involuntarily. His face seemed to show genuine confusion, but she did not allow herself to accept it outright, knowing that there was no one more practiced at deceit than a Faceless Man, and there was no one more adept at the art of facelessness than Jaqen H'ghar.

Each stared at the other, waiting. When it became obvious to her mentor that his apprentice did not intend to add more details, he put words to his confusion.

"A man does not understand."

The girl sighed and then returned testily, "It's a simple question, Jaqen. I want to know _why_ you did it."

"What did a man do?" he asked, pushing up further from her so that he could better focus on her face, his hands still pinning hers down, rendering them useless for attacking or defending. She tested her legs for movement but found they were trapped by the weight of his own. She could only move her feet and wiggle her toes, not a very useful thing to have at her disposal at the moment. He frowned at her again and growled his command, "Quit squirming."

She dropped her gaze from his bronze eyes to his neck and saw again the wound there, three healing scratches, parallel marks proving his guilt. She tried to lift her hand to touch the marks, to make her heart believe what her logic was telling her. Her hand remained pinned firmly under Jaqen's iron grip, however, and she was overtaken with such fury that she felt as if it might consume her, turning her to ash even as she remained pressed beneath her master in his own bed. The girl was angry that she was being restrained when _she_ had done nothing wrong. She was angry that she had been thrown (literally) into such a dangerous situation without explanation. She was angry that she was not getting any satisfaction on the matter from her master. She wanted _answers._ She wanted _retribution._ She wanted _to get up from that damn bed._ She had come here to question _Jaqen_ , not to submit to _his_ interrogation. Her helplessness gnawed at her and she became even angrier and more desperate.

Fueled by her intense frustration, a rash plan seized the apprentice's mind and she acted without thought, engaging her instinct instead. _You have all the instinct you could ever require. Your task is to learn to heed it._ She pushed up from the mattress with her elbows, lifting her shoulders and chest as high as she could. She craned her neck so that she could move her head as close to her master as possible, bringing her lips to his neck. The angry pucker of her mouth softened into a gentle line, her lips parting slightly as she breathed out through them, brushing them against the dried scratches given to her master by the cat; by _his_ Cat. She felt Jaqen go very still and he drew one breath in and held it. The girl closed her eyes, the movement of her lids caressing her mentor with her long lashes, and then she closed her lips over the skin of his neck, trapping a small part of the wounded flesh with her warm mouth, gently clamping his skin and tugging softly at it.

The Cat told herself that she _made_ her next breath convincingly ragged and that it had nothing to do with Jaqen's spicy scent clouding her nostrils, a redolent reminder of his nearness and also who he was. She shook off the heady feeling that threatened to overtake her, lest it rob her of her wits, and opened her mouth just enough to expose the tip of her tongue, which she used to slowly trace the path of the innermost scratch, dragging her moist lower lip along his neck as she did. When she found the end of her reach due to his restraining of her and her mouth had moved as high as it could, she nipped at his flesh, first with her lips and then with her teeth, gently scraping his skin. As she had hoped he would, he loosened his grip on her wrists, flexing his fingers lazily as he pressed her prone forearms gently with his calloused palms. _Quick as a snake,_ the girl snatched her arm from beneath his hand and found her blade, still laying atop the blanket. Her fingers scrabbled, grasping at the dagger desperately. She clutched the hilt firmly in her hand but before she could do any damage with it, her master had wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug, rolling over with her pressed against him, chest to chest, belly to belly, and then threw her off of the bed and onto the unforgiving stone floor.

The girl struck the ground with force and her blade was knocked from her hand, skittering across the stones and almost reaching the door on the far wall. She rolled herself over gingerly onto her back, her elbows and knees abraded and bleeding slightly. After resting a minute, she pushed herself up on her forearms, elbows bent, looking up at her master. Jaqen was now seated on the edge of his bed, his sheet and blanket draped around his middle and tangled between his thighs, the rest of his tanned skin completely uncovered. The girl groaned and allowed herself to drop back down flat onto her back, her troubled eyes staring up at the rafters. She placed her hands over her face and breathed noisily in and out, not knowing what else to do.

"Perhaps a girl should assume a man knows _nothing_ and tell him _all,_ " her master suggested, but with a tone that illustrated it was much more of a command than the words themselves might imply.

The Cat sighed into her hands and then sat up, drawing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them, the dampness of her shift chilling her now that she did not have her master's warmth pressing against her. He seemed to take pity on her and pulled his blanket free, keeping the sheet for himself, and tossed her the soft wool covering. She wrapped it around her body gratefully and then gave Jaqen a pitiful look, sick with her confusion and worry.

"Tell a man," he urged, this time more softly.

And so she did. She began the story in her dark cell, explaining how she was having difficulty sleeping and became irritated with the press of the knife and leather strap at her thigh.

"A girl sleeps with a knife at her thigh _?_ " the Lorathi asked incredulously.

She replied, "Well, as it turned out, it was a good thing."

She told him how she had thrown the knife and it had struck a living target, though she couldn't be sure who she had wounded or where she had hit him. She figured the injury was not too grave as it did not seem that any of her attackers was suffering too greatly and she was fairly sure four men entered the room and four men completed their task. At the mention of _their task_ , Jaqen quirked his eyebrow at her.

"I'll get to that," she assured him.

She explained the whole experience of being carried into the lowest levels of the temple and how once she felt the damp air as they descended to the deepest part, she understood what it was that her attackers intended to do with her. As she described being shoved through the door over the canal, her master's grip on the edge of the mattress seemed to tighten. She paused, watching his knuckles turn white but he said nothing, so she continued her tale, reaching the part that had caused her such grief and confusion; the part that had led her to her master's room.

"Once the hood was off," she began, "I was able to look back through the door and I could just make out…"

Her words trailed off and she pulled her lower lip between her teeth, chewing it slowly, her eyes drifting down to the floor and her brow wrinkling as she called up the details of what she had seen, trying to convince herself that what she believed she had witnessed was nothing more than a mistake.

"What was it, lovely girl?" her master's voice gently prodded her.

"I couldn't see any faces, but I could see the neck of the man nearest to the door, standing as close to my eyes as you are now," she told him, and then dropping her voice almost to a whisper and lifting her finger to point toward his neck, added, "and I saw _those_ scratches, Jaqen."

At the girl's words, her master sprang up from his bed with a force that startled his apprentice and the look in his eyes left her feeling very cold, despite the thick blanket draped around her shoulders. The Lorathi looked _angry._ He looked as angry as she had ever seen him. No, _angrier._

The girl leaned away from him, instinctively wary, unsure what his intentions were. For a small moment, she thought he _might be_ angry that she had identified him and meant to… _silence_ her? She wasn't sure, but he just seemed so furious and looked to be bursting to act. Without a word, he turned from her, allowing his sheet to drop away as he snatched up the breeches draped over rail at the foot of his bed, pulling them on swiftly as she averted her eyes in embarrassment. _Who sleeps naked?_ she wondered, coloring as she bit her lip again. She then berated herself for her stupidity. _With everything that is going on right now, you think your master's naked arse is something to be concerned with?_

After a moment, Jaqen began pacing the length of the room. It was a familiar habit of his, something he did when he wished to think and he wasn't being completely _faceless_ about it. Her eyes tracked him on his repeating path. He was barefoot, unclad but for breeches, his normally groomed hair mussed and slightly tangled. He was muttering.

"A man did not do this thing, but someone wished for it to appear as if he did," he said quietly, his eyes narrowed dangerously, his gaze sweeping along the floor back and forth as if the answer might be found resting on the cool stones. He was speaking more to himself than to his apprentice. "But a girl was hooded. For whose benefit, this ruse? Unless the hood was meant to fall..."

The Cat placed her chin on her knees, her face tilted so that she could watch his pacing, listening for any words he might have that could explain all that befell her that night. She thought to herself that if Jaqen had anything to do with her being tossed into the canal to drown or be eaten (or both), he was doing a fair job of confounding the fact. Her own ogling of him as he paced, practically naked, was doing little to help her own concentration, so she turned her face from him and pressed it against her knees, chewing her lip and willing herself to _know_ the truth.

She thought back to her instinctive reaction when she thought she saw her mentor through the small doorway as she dangled above the canal waters. She had felt _hope_ , even _joy_. She was _relieved,_ because she knew he would never allow her to come to harm. As it turned out, her relief had been short-lived and her hope misplaced, but it had been her _instinctive_ reaction. The Cat wanted to believe in her master; _did_ believe in her master.

_Do you trust a man?_

_I trust you more than I trust any man alive._

She cleared her mind, no easy task with all that she had learned and endured since Jaqen's return to Braavos, but she did it nonetheless. Her eyes pressed into her knees so hard that she felt in them an aching pain. She exhorted herself to find _stillness_ , looking for the _awareness_ that came with it. And then, she had it. She _felt_ , and she _knew._

Arya suddenly had the certainty that her master had not done this thing. She felt it in her bones as she did when a bit of knowledge was undeniable but perhaps not completely explainable. Despite how her eyes had informed her, despite what her logic had told her, despite the Kindly Man's warning to her, she knew the truth. She perceived it, almost able to grasp it physically with her hands, the truth a nearly tangible thing now, so real was it in her mind. Her bones were singing to her, resonating with the conviction of her truth. Once the feeling took hold of her, she understood that Jaqen could not have done this thing because if he had, it would mean that her bones were lying to her and if _that_ were possible, then she would be wrong about other things, too; things that were too important for her to risk being _wrong_. Jon was _not_ dead. She could _feel_ him in the same place she could feel the truth about Jaqen.

And so she knew.

The Cat lifted her head and saw that her master still paced. He noticed her small movement and it stopped him in his tracks. He gazed down at his apprentice, his hair hanging messily around his face. His eyebrows drew themselves together in a look of concern as he squatted in front of her, meeting her eyes.

"A man did not do this thing," he told her, and the truth of what she already knew was apparent in the burning of his bronze eyes.

"I know," she told him simply, then she hesitated, swallowing before adding, "I… I need to tell you something. I didn't tell you what happened after I fell into the canal… how I escaped."

"A man knows."

This confused her, not understanding _what_ Jaqen thought he knew. He assuredly did not know what it was she intended to say. How could he? She had only just accepted the truth of what she could do herself.

"No… I mean, I have to tell you something… about the eels. And, about the cat… The one in the alley by the armory."

Her master gave her a sad smile and stood up, reaching down for her and pulling her up to standing.

"A man knows," he repeated. "And if he knows, he fears others do as well."

The girl tilted her face toward him, her cheeks now gone pale at his words. She thought back to Westeros; to her girlhood and the tales Old Nan had told the Stark children about giants and white walkers and wargs, ideas that the girl had assumed were created for entertainment and to scare children into complying with their bedtime. She recalled particularly how Old Nan had said that once, wargs were revered for their magic but later, they came to be regarded with suspicion, thought of even as demons, and this led to reprisals by the fearful population. Most of the wargs had eventually been slaughtered and those who survived were driven north of the Wall, according to the legends Old Nan recounted.

"Are you worried that there are some in the order who would… _kill_ me because of what I can do?" she whispered, wondering how it was remotely possible that she could evade the murderous intent of a house _full_ of Faceless Men. She swallowed down the small knot in her throat, the physical manifestation of the despair that was trying to overtake her.

"If only it were that simple," her master remarked, his expression grim as he encircled her with his arms protectively.

The girl had witnessed many embraces in her life. She had seen whores embracing men they hoped to bed for their coin in roadhouses and inns and taverns. She had seen sassy kitchen wenches pulled into the arms of drunken knights as they served in the hall of a great lord, or even at a king's feast. She had seen her own lord father demonstrating his ardor for her lady mother by wrapping his strong arms around the red-haired beauty and holding her tight. The embrace of her master was not like any of these. There was no feeling of affection in it, no lust, no emotional deceit meant to garner some reward. It was not some physical declaration of love or thoughtless, drunken action. The Lorathi did not seek to fulfill his own carnal desire. Jaqen held Arya as if to shield her from whatever sinister force he seemed to see coming for her that she could not herself perceive; to hide her from the world and keep her safe. As he pulled her closer, the blanket fell away from her shoulders and drooped halfway down her back. Her master placed his hand between her shoulders, pulling her closer to him, but felt the dampness of her hair and clothes and remarked upon it.

"A girl is still wet."

"I haven't had time to completely dry yet after my midnight swim," she replied sarcastically.

Normally, he would have snorted his amusement or frowned his disapproval at her tone, but his face remained serious and he released her from his embrace, heading for a trunk at the foot of his bed. Lifting the lid, he began rummaging through it and then pulled out one of his thin, white blouses, offering it to her. When she did not take it, not understanding, he gave a mirthless laugh and told her that he could not make her _cleaner_ after her dance with the eels in the muck on the bottom of the canal, but he could at least make her _drier._

"A man will not look," he assured her, as he lifted the shirt to her again. "Besides, he has already seen."

Dropping the blanket to the floor, she growled at him and snatched the shirt from his hand, scampering to a dim corner as Jaqen made a show of turning his back to her. She quickly slipped her filthy shift off and replaced it with the soft, dry blouse, laces at the neck askew. In her state of unease, she dared not fiddle with them, lest she give him even more opportunity to mock her inability to properly manage the fastenings of clothes. The hem of the shirt reached halfway to her knees, draping gently around her form, but she still felt bare. She scrambled to retrieve the sheet her mentor had discarded earlier when he had pulled on his breeches and she wrapped herself in it, covered from neck to toe. The Lorathi turned around and then laughed, accusing her of stealing the one dry coverlet in the room.

"You have soaked a man's blanket and dampened his mattress," he laughed, "and now you deny him his sheet?"

"You can have it back when I leave," she grumbled, starting toward the door to retrieve her dagger from the floor. She did not intend to make the trek back to her cell unarmed.

As she passed the assassin, he grabbed her arm, holding her firmly in place.

"You will go nowhere, lovely girl," he purred softly.

She raised her eyebrows at his serious expression and waited for him to tell her further what she must do before she would be allowed to retire to her own chamber.

"A man cannot protect you a whole floor below, as your battle with the eels of the canal has proven. You will sleep here tonight, and tomorrow… A man will find you a place."

"A man will find me a place?" she repeated, not comprehending.

"An assignment. One that will require you leave the temple, for a time. Until a man has discovered the meaning of this plot."

"You want me to _leave_ the temple?" she clarified, not believing. "But, how will I train? How will I prepare myself for the final trial?"

"There are ways. This thing can be done. But you are not safe here just now, sweet child. A man will speak with the principal elder about this in the morning."

"But Jaqen, if I'm _out there_ , won't I be even _more_ exposed?"

"Exposure is not the worst thing in this case," he told her. "A girl has her wits, and a girl has her skills. You will be safe enough."

The Cat nodded her acceptance of her master's judgment and then tugged herself free of his restraint, heading to the door and retrieving her small dagger. She slipped it the leather strap she still wore on her thigh, just beneath the hem of Jaqen's large blouse. Her master shook his head at her, telling her she did not need to remain armed in his chamber. He would protect her from harm.

"The last time I trusted my master to protect me from harm, he dangled me over a canal and then tried to feed me to the eels," she reminded him. "How can I even know that you're… _you_?"

The Lorathi approached his apprentice, tilting his head, his bronze eyes boring into her. When he reached where the girl stood, he placed one hand upon her shoulder and the other he pressed flat against her belly, his warmth seeping deep into her.

"What does a girl's gut tell her?" he asked simply.

She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, detecting cloves and ginger. She exhaled with a sigh and opened her eyes, the storm in them now calm as she replied, "My gut tells me that you are Jaqen H'ghar."

Her master smiled at her and she thought she understood why. She believed him to be pleased that she trusted him; that she understood and accepted his fidelity. He smiled at her gently and she really ascertained nothing; not comprehending that she had named him again and this time, it was without threat; without the shadow of death. This time, it was simply her faith in him that allowed her to claim him; to _make_ him.

_My gut tells me that you are Jaqen H'ghar._

He smiled at her gently and whispered, "Just so."

 


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Intrusive A/N: I've been toying with the idea of posting songs I thought might serve as a sort of "theme" for some of the chapters. I've thus far resisted for fear it was simply too "cheesy" but then, as I was joking in some recent PMs, I totally could hear "Mortal Kombat" in my head while Arya was breaking bad on that last eel. Why deprive others of my twisted sense of what makes an appropriate theme song for this story? ;) As I have become more obsessed with writing this story, I find myself listening to a song on the radio/iPod and thinking about how it applies to different scenarios I am writing or planning to write. Sometimes it's straightforward—the lyrics really speak to the mood/emotion/moment. Sometimes it just sounds right. Sometimes it's merely a line or two that strikes a chord (or a chord or two that strikes a line…) I have decided to put a line at the end of any chapter that has a song I think fits it in some way, listing title and artist. Putting it at the end avoids any sort of spoiler for the chapter. Like, if I listed "Willie Nelson: On the Road Again" at the top of the page, I could see someone saying, "OH MAN, now I know Arya is riding an eel back to Westeros! Dammit!" Putting it at the end allows for the avoidance of spoilers and is probably also a little easier to ignore for people who want nothing to do with my questionable musical tastes. I don't plan to use the songs to explain anything further or to give clues about the story, so ignoring them will not put you at any disadvantage. Take it for what it's worth. I will say that after I started writing this story, I realized that Mumford and Sons wrote almost every song (except for Little Lion Man) about Jaqen, Arya, or Jaqen and Arya (and there's a few about Gendry, too). Who knew those dudes were such Jaqen/Arya 'shippers?
> 
> So, to kick us off (and break my own rule by putting this at the beginning of the chapter, but it's okay since it refers to the previous chapters), the theme song for Arya's abduction through the end of chapter 26 is Lupe Fiasco's "Letting Go"

  


An adrenaline release, triggered in times of great anxiety, can be a very useful thing, especially to an abducted girl who must first avoid drowning, then must find a way to _not_ be eaten by eels, and finally must confront an elite assassin to determine if he has masterminded or participated in a particular plot which resulted in her nearly drowning and being eaten by eels. The effect of the adrenaline on the body is beneficial for many reasons during such trying circumstances. The heartbeat quickens, pumping blood to organs having great need of it and improving their functionality. The breathing becomes more rapid, allowing a larger quantity of air into the lungs and feeding that same blood, making it more effective for those organs (though, in those cases where one finds oneself standing at the bottom of a canal under fifteen feet of water, rapid breathing is perhaps a less-than-useful benefit). The focus becomes acute, supporting greater concentration. Pain fades, allowing for proper use of limbs and muscles despite injury, possibly even increasing the strength in them. However, these temporary effects will fade once the danger triggering the adrenaline has passed, leaving the person who experienced the stress and the resultant fleeting adrenaline rush feeling rather exhausted. Or, in the Cat's case, in a state of near-collapse.

The girl stood before her master, swaying slightly with her fatigue. She was wearing his thin shirt, wrapped snugly in his sheet as she dimly registered that it smelled like him, and struggling to keep her eyes open.

"Come," Jaqen commanded, leading her toward his bed. Her unquestioning obedience in following her master made him wonder if he ought to only attempt instructing the girl when she was near to a faint (she might not be any use with a blade then, but she would certainly be more cooperative and less taxing on his nerves). He tugged at her sheet and her resistance was only halfhearted. Once the linen covering was unwound from her body, the Lorathi bade his apprentice lie down and covered her with the sheet he had just reclaimed. She wiggled herself closer to the edge of the mattress to avoid the damp spot she had created when she was flipped onto the bed by the master she had believed to be soundly sleeping when she had entered his cell.

_Bloody Faceless Men and their stupid keen senses,_ she thought as she remembered the Lorathi throwing her onto his mattress and restraining her as easily as if she had been a mere child with no training whatsoever. It was... _embarrassing._

Her mentor turned to retrieve his chair from its place against the wall near the door and carried it silently toward his bed, setting it close to her head and dropping into it with his typical ease and grace. His casually reclining form demonstrated no small amount of that Lorathi swagger the so often irked his apprentice.

"Are you going to sleep in that chair?" the girl questioned her master with a yawn, turning onto her side to face him.

"A man will not sleep."

The Cat managed a convincingly skeptical look before covering another yawn with the back of her hand and ruining the effect. She slipped her hands between the pillow and her head, resting her cheek on them and creating a picture of youth and innocence that tugged painfully at something inside of the assassin. He leaned back further in his chair, reminding himself that his _innocent_ apprentice had seen much to rob her of her naivete and had herself taken many lives in her short years, some of those of her _own_ choosing and not merely in the service of their god. _And yet… And yet…_

Her accusing voice interrupted his thoughts.

"Aren't you going to at least put on some clothes?" the girl snapped peevishly. Jaqen was still clad only in his breeches.

"Does a man's naked flesh stop a girl from closing her eyes and dreaming of her wolf?" he chuckled. When she said nothing, he continued to needle her, adding, "Besides, you are wearing a man's favorite shirt. If you wish to return it, a man will gladly dress for you."

She puckered her mouth and wrinkled her nose, quite like a spoiled child being thwarted from doing something she expects to be allowed to do by a nursemaid she is usually able to cow and bend to her will. Her petulance made her master grin, which, of course, further fueled her consternation. She picked at the untied laces of her blouse neck, scrutinizing them with a critical eye.

"If _this_ is your favorite shirt, I think it's obvious that you have little interest in fashion," she replied haughtily. "How do you expect to impress bouncing tavern wenches and lonely ladies wearing _this?_ "

"A girl does not like a man's blouse? How strange. A man finds it perfect for the setting off of his _bronze_ eyes," Jaqen replied in his irritatingly carefree way. "Besides, it is not _clothes_ a man uses for the impressing of ladies. _Or_ bouncing tavern wenches."

Her mouth dropped open as she sat up slightly from the bed, propping on her shoulder and elbow, meaning to say something stinging to her master; something to put him in his place. With her movements, however, she felt the strain of her swim in the canal starting to stiffen her muscles and gritted her teeth against the pain. Her pause allowed Jaqen to continue his teasing of her.

"A girl did not seem too concerned with a man's clothing earlier this evening," he reminded her, locking his eyes onto hers. "In fact, the last time a man recalls wearing no clothes _at all_ , he found a beautiful girl in his bed even though he had not issued her an invitation to be there."

Heat flooded the apprentice's face and she sucked in a horrified breath before rushing to defend herself.

"But… you... I... you _know_ what I… I came here to _threaten_ you… You know why I did…" she sputtered, finding herself more flustered than she could understand, adding weakly, "I meant to _threaten_ …"

"Just so," the assassin agreed amiably. "You threatened a man to the point of abject terror with your lips and your _tongue."_

The girl's eyes grew wide with her mortification and for a moment, she stopped breathing and released a tiny squeak. Jaqen continued to hold her gaze, smirking slightly at her, and she bit her lip, squeezing her eyes shut as she fell back onto the pillow, turning over to bury her burning face into its cool surface. She found herself wondering miserably how it was possible to love a man and hate a man so much, all at once. She heard him pulling the chair closer to the bed but did not look up. His voice came as a whisper, close enough to tickle her ear.

"Oh, and your _teeth_. Let us not forget those."

The girl's snarl was muffled by the pillow but she finally turned over and glared at her mentor, saying, " _This_ is why I sleep with a knife!"

He leaned back from her and smiled fondly at his apprentice, holding his hands up before him in a gesture of surrender, saying, "Do not scratch at me with your little claws, ferocious Cat. A man has been scarred enough by your hand."

This small, conciliatory remark changed the Cat's mood completely. It drew the girl's mind back to the alley in the Armorers District, to a time when she had merely wished for her master to release her after he had pinned her against the exterior wall of Meerios' shop, having learned of her efforts at spying on him. Well, it more than a _wish,_ she supposed. She had seen the cat and _willed_ it to attack him. She hadn't meant to hurt Jaqen, but in truth, she hadn't really thought the whole thing out very well. She wished to be free, she saw the cat, and she projected her desire for freedom upon the animal. She had _felt_ herself inside of the cat's head, just briefly, directing the feline to action, and then she was gone, almost as if she had never been there in his mind at all. This sort of thing had happened before, but she had never been able to put a name to it until she found herself opening her jaw full of razor-sharp teeth in the canal, gnawing the bonds around her own wrists.

Before, when she had used a cat's eyes to watch the Kindly Man attack her during her blind trial and later, when she had used a cat's ears to listen to Meerios' conversation with her master, she had found a sort of logical explanation for how she knew what she knew. She had experienced minor episodes of seeing things she should not be able to see from her vantage point, usually while staring out at the water from the docks, seeing ships in the bay as if she were a bird flying overhead. The girl had mostly assumed she had a very good imagination for picturing things, or, barring that, had merely shrugged, figuring that some things simply weren't knowable and her uncanny ability to see and hear certain things was one of those mysterious unknowns. She was never too bothered by it. Perhaps there was even an element of denial to her lack of understanding. But when she felt herself in the eel… when she _pushed herself_ into the eel, it had suddenly become clear to her.

Arya turned from her side so that she was resting on her back, staring up at the rafters as she chewed her lip. As he had done once before, her master reached for her mouth and tugged the abused lip from between her teeth with his thumb.

"With all the worrying a girl has been doing lately, it is a wonder she has a bottom lip left to chew," Jaqen observed. "You may have want of that lip later. A girl never knows when she will need to drag it along a man's neck to terrify him into admitting his guilt in a plot he knows nothing about. Stop gnawing at it."

She almost rolled her eyes at him but thought the better of it and instead asked, "Do you think… Do you suppose when I dream of Nymeria, I'm actually _with_ her? Am I in Westeros when I sleep? It feels so real…" Her voice drifted off as she stared at the flickering shadows of the rafters cast by the candle. She was thinking of a memory from long ago, something she had always considered a dream, but now she wasn't so sure. Had she drug her mother from the water near the Twins? Is that how Lord Beric was able to revive her? Had she worn Nymeria's skin and pulled Catelyn Stark from the river, leading to the birth of Lady Stoneheart? It seemed strange to think it but that did not make it any less true. Arya's mother had created Arya, and in a way, Arya had also created her mother. Neither of them were close to their original forms. Whether their current iterations were an improvement over those earlier versions of themselves or not was likely a matter open to interpretation.

"Some part of a girl existing inside of her wolf, half a world away? A man believes this to be the truth," her mentor replied softly. "A girl has a very powerful gift."

"A _gift_?" she questioned doubtfully. She frowned at that, still not looking at him. With the history of wargs in Westeros and the fact that her own abilities might somehow be at the center of whatever it was that had just happened to her, she wasn't so sure she could think of this _thing_ as a gift. She mulled it over, what she was, finally acknowledging, "I'm a warg." It was the first time she had ever said it out loud.

"A warg _..._ " her master repeated thoughtfully.

_Warg;_ it was a Westerosi term, one not often uttered in Essos. Across the Narrow Sea, most of the people of the Seven Kingdoms no longer believed that wargs were real, thinking of them as exaggerated creatures of legend. The current Westerosi were far too enlightened, too _educated,_ to believe in such nonsense now. In the Free Cities, the local terms were some variant of the phrase "shape shifter" but even that was not often heard, as not many believed in such things, even here. Or, at least they hadn't believed before dragons reentered the world. But that term wasn't exactly right either. Neither _warg_ nor _shape shifter_ accurately described what it was that this girl could do.

Arya's abilities seemed broader, somehow. Her talents were... _advanced_ , especially considering that she had not been given any instruction or structured practice in using them. Jaqen had only witnessed her use the cat in the alley near the docks, but she had not seemed to leave herself at all. He had already suspected that she might possess a sort of unusual talent based on something the principal elder once related to the him years ago, shortly after the Lorathi had returned from Westeros to find a nearly three and ten Arya Stark training among the servants of the temple. It was something about the girl discovering who had been attacking her during her blind trial. The elder had made an off-hand remark about the temple cat being the only other witness to her feat and _that_ had started Jaqen's mind to turning. Of course, the girl's wolf dreams had also given him cause to consider what she might be doing, but what he had seen in the alley had truly stunned him. To her master's eye, it appeared that just Arya's merest whim had sent the animal into action. After that, he had become convinced that with training, she could influence _men_ with her mind, using a simple projection of her will.

_A girl who could control the actions of men by mere thought..._

The assassin feared that this would be the thing that would make his apprentice immeasurably valuable to a host of others, some of noble intent, some driven by darker purposes, and that they would seek to take her from him so that _they_ might control her. That she could be abducted by someone who would torture her to get what they wanted was a thought which made him anxious in a way he had forgotten he could even _be_. But even if it were a _kindly_ person who exploited her, she would not be happy in this role. Whether fashioned from gold or iron, chains were still chains, and Arya Stark was not the sort to meekly submit to the will of another.

The Cat yawned again, bending her neck and touching her chin to her chest, feeling the stretch. Inhaling deeply, she dropped her head back and made a small groaning noise. Her eyelids were heavy but she fought to keep them open, thinking that there was too much to decide with her master and that she couldn't afford to sleep. Jaqen saw her attempts to remain awake and laughed, telling her that she needed to close her eyes and get what rest she could.

"There is nothing further you can do just now."

"Well, what about you?" his apprentice asked. "If there is nothing more to be done, shouldn't you go to sleep?"

"A man said there was nothing further _you_ could do. There is thinking yet left for a man," he explained, not adding that he intended to keep watch. He was unsure if there might be another attempt to harm his apprentice that night but if so, he had no intention of letting it succeed. The Lorathi waved his hand over the flame of his candle and it died in an instant.

"You _really_ have to show me how you do that,” she murmured sleepily. “I want to learn how this lighting and extinguishing of candles is done.”

"A man will teach you everything you need to know, lovely girl," her master promised in his Lorathi purr. The girl simply nodded tiredly and allowed her eyelids to close finally without protest. Once she surrendered herself to her exhaustion, she fell asleep as easily as a well-fed babe cradled in her mother's arms.

She blinked hard, emitting a small whine. She was fatigued from her ranging, but she could not stop now, no matter how she ached to rest. She had been moving almost nonstop for two days, ever east. She was meant to be at the inn with that great, dark knight who shared her sorrow ( _Gendry,_ some part of her thought then), but not yet. She had arrived too soon, but then, when she remembered the children being attacked, she realized that perhaps she had been just in time. And her little cousins had feasted, filling their bellies near to bursting. But now, she was drawn to the east, in search of food and… _something else._ She had no word for the old magic that pulled her closer to the land where she had been a captive once, when she walked on two legs and wore a gown of blood, a long time ago. Though she could not name it, she _felt_ it, and so she pushed on, and her cousins followed.

The moon was hidden behind the clouds but she did not need its light to see. Her wolf eyes were keen despite the cover of night, but even the girl within her knew how to move to sounds; how to _see_ without _seeing;_ lessons learned in that dark and mysterious house where she sometimes lived; a place where the dead were both an offering and a feast (not for wolves but for other creatures).

Wolves were known to move up to fifty miles in a day as they ranged for food but at the grueling pace she was enforcing, the pack had covered half again as many miles each day. The pull of the magic was too strong to ignore and she felt a need to reach her destination. But even a direwolf driven with purpose must needs eat, her cousins even more so. Their hunger would slow their journey but it could not be helped.

She stopped and raised her snout into the air, sniffing. There was a smell, faint, but it was growing stronger. The smell meant _food._ She began stalking silently toward it, her fluid movement carrying her over the fallen leaves and brown grass as gracefully as a water dancer, and then she was no longer walking, but gliding; gliding and pushing languidly through the cold, murky depths, floating just above the muck and the splintered bones of those who had fed her before. She moved toward her prey and then she was dragging her scales along the living thing she was driven to eat. It was soft and still and warm, _so warm for the daughter of corpses_ , and it smelled like meat. She opened her powerful jaw and there were a thousand thousand teeth, made of Valyrian steel, rows upon rows of perfectly pointed daggers straining up from her mouth, seeking to tear chunks from her own smooth, white flesh. Her belly was so empty that it pained her and she could not stop herself from eating as her thin, white gown billowed up around her waist. She tore and ravaged the girl that was her, blood seeping down the front of her shift, staining the cloth crimson. Clouds of red drifted outward, turning the waters around her into a horror. Her hunger drove her, a relentless force she was unable to resist. She obeyed its command to ruin her own soft flesh even as she screamed and screamed and screamed…

 

* * *

 

When his apprentice had finally surrendered to her exhaustion, Jaqen merely watched her for a long while in the faint moonlight, feeling somehow satisfied with each of her her slow, even breaths. Knowing her fatigue, he was relieved that she was able to rest under his watchful eye, even if he himself was to have no respite that night. His mind was buzzing far too much for him to succumb to the lure of sleep, anyway.

He thought of their earlier encouanter that morning in the long corridor outside of the training room. He had sent her into the chamber to spar with her brothers. Might one of them have been involved in this deed? He doubted it very much, but even if so, he knew it would have been at the direction of someone with more authority than the acolytes themselves had been granted within their order. Jaqen could not imagine either the cunning Westerosi or the bear-like Lyseni daring to invoke his displeasure by attacking his own apprentice. Later, after his council meeting, he had crossed blades with the girl himself, and then had taught her that minor bit of blood magic. He had meant to give her some added ability to protect herself but it had not occurred to him that the protection she would need would be from those among their own order.

When the Cat found herself threatened, it was the knife she fell back to, not her newly-acquired skill. The assassin supposed the paralyzing spell would not have been of great benefit against four Faceless Men anyway (it was a thing more useful against a single foe, in close quarters). The Lorathi closed his eyes and tried to call up the memory of teaching his apprentice how to find the spot she would need in order to use the spell effectively. Instead, he found himself contemplating the memory of her bare, white shoulder, and the healing bruise that discolored her arm.

_"Say the words," he had told her, wanting to be sure she could accurately produce the sounds. The spell was useless if not done correctly and he intended for her to master this and much else before she left his supervision, an event that would occur all too soon._

_"An'ha assab dami?" she had tried, and her accent was perfect. Her tongue was made for languages, the assassin had thought as the sounds easily dripped from his apprentice's lips. Later, when she crept up upon him in his chamber and found herself subdued by her master's superior strength, the girl would try to show him that it was made for other things as well._

_"Yes. In the common tongue, it would be akin to saying 'to stop the blood and nerves.' Say them again," he prodded, wanting to know that she had committed the words to her memory but also just wanting to hear her utter them in her naturally beguiling way. There was a part of him that knew this was folly, but he ignored the warning and gave in to this small, harmless temptation._

_She did as she was bid and then asked him, "Why are they important?"_

_He did not look at her while he let the sound of her voice murmuring the foreign words fade away from his ears. As he cast his eyes down, he found the healing bruises of her upper arm, realizing they must have come from her first day of sparring with him while using her heavier sword. Jaqen had wrapped his fingers around her arm and used his thumb to stroke the injured flesh. One corner of his mouth lifted almost involuntarily. He could sense the girl's vexation rolling off of her in accusing waves and he knew she thought he was enjoying the memory of her pain. She was still so young, he had to remind himself, and so she never guessed that there could be other reasons motivating the way she was treated by others. She only felt the insults and derision, never the admiration._

_He did nothing to correct her perception even though he had been smiling the smile of a proud master. He saw those bruises from a few short days before and realized that when they had only just sparred, he had not landed a single blow like to leave such an ugly mark. Her blade skills were simply magnificent and progressing at an astonishing rate. If only she had been started younger, as he was… but that was a consequence of being born the wrong sex for such things, at least in Westeros. She was just fortunate to have come upon Syrio when she did._

_Fortunate, indeed._

Arya's deep, even breaths became more sporadic, almost sounding like short sniffs, and her sleep was suddenly much more fitful. She began mumbling and the sound of her voice drew Jaqen from his memories.

_She dreams of her wolf,_ her master thought, leaning forward to watch her and listen.

"Mmm, east," she said, barely articulate. "Tired." Her hands flinched a bit, stirring the sheet that had been pulled up to her neck, exposing her ivory throat and the discolored evidence of his fingers that lined her neck. He regarded the marks without remorse. The lesson was an important one and if he had to bruise her again to make that point, he would do it. He didn't quite understand the Cat's lack of caution when it came to her _Kindly Man_ , but he intended for her to learn to be wary. As Jaqen watched, she swallowed and muttered something about an inn; _going back_ to an inn. He thought of the inn near the Purple Harbor, just across from the Moon Pool.

The Lorathi wondered if his apprentice had enjoyed the time she spent in the inn. He thought perhaps she might like to go back there someday. It gave him an idea...

"East... to the waters," she muttered. " _Eat_."

The girl seemed to quiet then and Jaqen leaned back in his chair. He thought more on an assignment for her; one that would remove her from the unknown dangers of the temple. He wanted to give her a different face, one that no one else would know about. Of course, it would not be possible to keep it from the principal elder, but that could not be helped. If his idea proved practical, he would have found her a place in a busy section of Braavos, and with a new face, she should be able to keep herself safe while he would be able to check on her frequently (to further her training, of course). Aside from his concerns about her physical safety, her master wondered if getting his lovely girl outside of the temple walls might allow for him to help her hone her _unique_ _talent_ more freely.

He was considering what that might mean for her when she suddenly began to toss in his bed, twisting the sheet in her small fists and then trying to kick it off. The assassin could not see his apprentice well enough in the dark to tell if her features were those of a girl dreaming or if she were in some sort of distress, so he uttered the words that would give the room light and the candle on the table next to his bed flamed to life once again. He blinked twice to adjust his eyes to the brightness just as the girl's gentle tossing turned to violent thrashing with speed and then she was _screaming_ ; screaming as if she were in real _pain,_ her eyes still closed but her face contorted into a harrowing mask of agony. Jaqen flew from his chair and was on her in an instant, lifting her from the mattress and shaking her. Even as she slept and dreamed, the girl fought him while she screamed and screamed. She thrust her face forward, striking Jaqen's shoulder with her forehead and then he felt a sharp pain over his left bicep. He pushed her back by her shoulders and realized that she had _bitten_ him.

The Lorathi held his apprentice upright and peered into her face intently, saying, "Arya! Arya!" in an urgent tone. The girl's eyes were just fluttering open and his blood was smeared on her chin and lower lip. She was gasping shallowly and shaking a bit when she looked into his eyes. Recognition seemed to calm her. Her voice was hoarse when she finally spoke.

"Jaqen?"

Feeling the wetness on her chin, the Cat wiped at it with the back of her hand and then was confronted by the sight of her master's blood against her pale skin. Her eyes widened with shock and then shock was replaced with a look of fear that her master did not understand. The girl pushed herself completely upright, pulling free of the Lorathi's hands. She seemed almost panicked as she set about frantically patting her belly and her sides, turning her head back and forth as if inspecting herself, expecting to find some sort of wound to explain the blood. With a whimper, she yanked at the neck of the blouse, pulling it away from her chest and looking down at herself. Seeing nothing but her own fair flesh, whole and undamaged, she breathed deeply and slumped back against the pillows. Her eyes turned toward her master and it was then that she saw the fresh injury to his arm. She flew up again and gave him a look that seemed a mix of apprehension and apology as her hands grasped at his forearm.

"Oh, no, I'm so sorry!" she cried. "I did that? I didn't mean it! I didn't know…"

"Shh,' he calmed her, "do not grieve, lovely girl. You merely scratched a man."

The girl's brow remained furrowed and Jaqen raised his hand to her temple, attempting to smooth the wrinkle from between her eyes with his thumb, saying, "It is not the first time you have left your mark on a man."

Her gaze traveled to the long, red grooves on Jaqen's neck and she could not look there without feeling some mixture of guilt and embarrassment (guilt for the part she had played in awarding him those scratches; embarrassment over her failed attempt manipulate her master by trailing her mouth over those same wounds). Biting at her lip a little, the girl pulled at the sheet over her lap fretfully, grasping a fistful of the cloth and using it to dab at the fresh wound on Jaqen's arm. The bleeding had mostly stopped and when she wiped away the blood, she could see the impression of her teeth, a perfect oval of raw crimson indentions and bruised tissue, imprinted upon his tanned flesh. Suddenly, she realized that she had ruined his sheet, looking sheepishly at the blood stained cover and then allowing it to fall back into her lap. She turned her eyes up to her mentor and stared at him for a long moment, willing herself to abandon her unseemly distress and fear; willing herself to be _still_.

"It wasn't real," she said as if to convince herself, some of her tension seeming to leave her as she exhaled after the observation.

"A girl dreamed of her wolf," her master stated. "Did you think a man was prey?"

"No. I mean, yes, I dreamed of my wolf, but _that_ was no dream," the girl muttered, waving at her mentor's arm, the bite mark reminding her of the yawning eel mouth opening again and again. "That was a _nightmare_. _I_ was the prey."

She shuddered, then cursed herself for a craven, aggravated that she had allowed a nightmare to affect her so. Ridiculous!

_You are behaving like stupid child who runs to her mother or her nurse for comfort in the night,_ her little voice chided. _You may as well hide under your blanket at the mention of grumpkins if you can be so unnerved by a nightmare._

She looked sheepishly at her mentor, reminding herself that she was an _almost-_ Faceless Man, not a silly little girl.

Jaqen was sitting at her side, facing her, his look of concern making her feel worse about the fact that she had _bitten_ him. She closed her eyes and rubbed at her forehead as she bowed it, feeling both exhausted and shaken all at once. The Cat felt her master rise from the bed and he returned to his trunk, lifting the lid and pulling something from within it—another blouse, this one dark. He pulled it over his head, his sleeve now covering the offending mark on his arm. After he closed trunk lid, he stood at the foot of the bed, his arms crossed over his now covered chest, looking at the acolyte in the soft glow of the candle. Self-conscious under her mentor's gaze, the girl sat up a bit straighter and then moaned a little at the ache in her shoulders as she did.

"Is a girl in pain?" her master questioned her.

"My shoulders are just getting stiff from the swim," she replied dismissively. "I guess it's been a while since I swam for any great length. I suppose I can work it out when we spar tomorrow."

Jaqen returned to her side and indicated that she should move over and allow him more room to sit. She did as he asked and her master sat on the edge of the bed, once again facing her as he spoke softly to her.

"Does a girl remember the first trick of the Asshai healers a man showed her?"

"Do you mean when you nearly incapacitated me with blinding pain and then I stopped feeling so sick at the inn?" she retorted sarcastically. "I think I recall it."

"There is something that may be done for these muscle aches," he told her, choosing to ignore her rancor.

The Cat looked at him strangely and then narrowed her eyes as she said, "Are you telling me that you can pinch a nerve or poke a muscle and make my soreness disappear? That the intense pain I was in after you first beat me around the training room while saddling me with _two_ swords could have been _completely avoided_? Are you saying that you made me soak in a bath _not_ because it was the only way to soothe my aches but because you wanted to humiliate me while you told me about the dragons?" By the time she had finished her questioning, it had become a tirade and she was seething.

"A man believes that sometimes there is a great lesson on pain," Jaqen replied simply, betraying no emotion.

She could barely contain her wrath, spitting, "A great _lesson_... A lesson in _pain?_ I think the _lesson_ is that you're a twisted monster!"

"So, a girl does _not_ wish for a twisted monster to ease her stiffness?" he probed for clarification. "Perhaps she sees the lesson in pain as well."

The Cat folded her arms and gave him a decidedly pouty look, wanting whatever relief he could offer her but not wanting to admit it to her master. Her stubbornness both amused and vexed him, a combination of feelings he found himself having during the majority of their interactions. At least, that's what he felt when he wasn't _worried_ for her, which, he noted with uneasiness, was more and more often lately. He shook his head at her obstinacy and sighed. How her father had not beaten her to death before she ever had the chance to come to King's Landing and then cross the Lorathi's path when she was Yoren's special charge, he would never know. _Maybe she was less stubborn as a young child,_ he thought to himself, but somehow, he doubted that was the case. He thought that Eddard Stark must have been an exceptionally patient man.

"Move forward, willful child," her master instructed her, sliding in behind her as she made a show of being reluctant to do as she was bid. He pushed at her back, forcing her to lean over her own lap and then brushed her hair over one shoulder. He placed the fingers of one hand at several points of her posterior neck while digging the thumb and forefinger from his other hand into her shoulder. At first, he simply kneaded the spots gently, but from her previous experience with these manipulations from Asshai, the girl was certain she was on the cusp of a moment of intense pain and so kept her shoulders and neck tense, resisting the Lorathi's ministrations. After a few minutes of this, Jaqen slipped the hand at her neck around the front of her, resting his forearm against her throat and using it to pull her back against him so that he might whisper in her ear.

"A girl must relax," he murmured softly and then pushed her forward into her previous position. He replaced his fingers on the spots he had touched before.

The Cat tried to relax, but found it difficult with her master putting his hands all over her and her anticipation of the blinding pain to come. As if reading her mind and wanting to express how ridiculous he found her thoughts, Jaqen grabbed her shoulders and shook her a little in irritation with her disobedience, and then once again returned his fingers to their positions.

"This is meant to help you," her mentor muttered, sounding as if he spoke through gritted teeth.

The girl took a deep breath in and then released it, allowing her tight muscles to loosen. Just as she did, her mentor dug his fingers into their various spots, boring into the muscles underneath the skin on which his fingers rested, and she suddenly felt... relaxed. It was as if the muscles had simply released and the stiffness and aching were instantly gone. Beyond that, the girl found that she felt less frustrated with... _everything_. She was no longer vexed that her master had not performed this ritual when she was in so much pain after her first time sparring with the bastard sword. She was no longer worried about why she had been tossed into the canal. She was no longer bothered by her nightmare and the guilt she felt for wounding her master while she slept and dreamed. She moaned again, but this time, it was with the satisfaction of surrendering to her contentment and weariness rather than with pain.

The Cat soon dropped back against Jaqen's chest, her eyelids heavy and her mind _unaccountably_ calm. She nestled her head under her master's chin without a thought of awkwardness, having no cares. Her cool cheek pressed lightly against the warmth of her master's chest and she was asleep just a short moment later.

The Lorathi dipped his face to brush the top of her dark hair with his nose, finding the mane still slightly damp. Somehow she did not smell of the canal, though. She smelled like _herself_. There was the tang of steel about her, as always, and something of a green meadow full of clover after a warm rain, which was a scent he had exclusively come across in Westeros during the long summer. And there was another element, something he couldn't put a name to, but to him it had the scent of freedom and innocence and just… _Northerness_. Were he blindfolded in a room full of women, he could find his apprentice by the unmistakable perfume of her very Northerness on her.

Arya shifted a little in her sleep, turning to the side and burrowing her chin into Jaqen's shoulder. He moved so that he could rest more comfortably and accommodate the girl in his arms. She seemed so small and fragile, though he told himself that in this lovely girl's case, looks were most deceiving. _Small, yes, but fragile?_ He smirked a little to himself, thinking of the Bear's bloody nose and the Westerosi boy's swollen wrists as they scurried away from the training room. But then he recalled what had brought her into his chamber in the first place and he felt less certain about her ability to take care of herself. Her inability to defend herself against the attack that had sent her plunging into the canal was his own failing. He had failed to prepare her for such an occurrence and he had failed to protect her from it. That he could not have known of the plot was of little comfort to him.

As he thought of her shivering in her wet shift, he pulled her slight frame tighter into himself, clenching his jaw. Someone had meant for the girl to meet her end at the bottom of the dark channel. Either that, or someone knew _exactly_ what she was capable of and arranged to have a demonstration of her unique abilities in a life-or-death setting. Just at the moment, Jaqen wasn't sure which scenario he feared most.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Volcano"-technically Damien Rice but I like the Phillip Phillips version for this. Sue me. Wait, don't sue me. Just enjoy whichever version of Volcano that you want and I'll do the same.


	28. Chapter 28

Sunlight filtered into the chamber from the small, high window and as the dark receded from the room, the Cat's eyes blinked several times, opening to see a strange scene. _Where am I?_ the girl wondered, confused. It took a moment for her to recognize that this was her master's room rather than her own and when the reality of her location set in, she bolted upright, clutching the sheet to her chest, looking around wildly. _Where was he?_

She found herself all alone in the quiet cell and she did not know where Jaqen had gone. Her memories from the night before came flooding back and she inspected herself to discover that she was, indeed, wearing her master's blouse and had slept in it. Chastened by the daylight, she was desperate to not be found where she was and seen in such a state, either by the Lorathi or anyone else. She sprang from the bed, found her wadded, filthy shift (now mostly dry but _completely_ grubby), and snatched it up from the floor. She couldn't bring herself to put it back on, not wishing to feel the chill or the damp against her skin as it was too reminiscent of her close encounter with the eels, both in the canal and in her nightmare. The girl decided her master could do without his _favorite_ blouse for a bit longer as she padded to the door and opened it. Quickly, she stuck her head through the entryway and peered down the passage in both directions. Seeing nothing, she stepped out of Jaqen's chamber and into the cool of the masters' corridor. As she quietly pulled the door closed behind her, the Cat saw the temple's hired laundress and her young helper doing the same, just down the passageway from her. They were exiting another of the masters' chambers, clothing and linens in hand.

 _Laundry day? Seven hells!_ she groused inwardly as the women looked up and met her eyes. The younger of the two actually yelped and dropped her armload of washables to the stone floor in her surprise. The Cat knew the servants by sight but did not know their names, as they only came into the temple once every few weeks to perform this small service. The apprentice rarely ever crossed their path. All three of the women were frozen in the corridor, staring at one another, saying nothing. Then, the laundress sniffed and began fussing at her helper in Braavosi, calling her a stupid girl and telling her to pick up the linens. The girl quickly complied and this seemed to break the spell paralyzing the Cat. She lifted her chin with as much dignity as she could muster and then moved nonchalantly along her way as if she belonged precisely where she was and there was nothing strange about her attire. She passed the women who greeted her politely, bobbing their heads slightly to her, but with perhaps a whiff of suspicion in their voices and the hint of an accusation in their eyes. As she rounded the corner, she could hear them whispering as they moved to the next room, her master's, to continue their work.

Once she was beyond the gaze of judgmental eyes, the Cat's bare feet flew along the passage until she came to the door leading to the stairwell which would take her back to her own cell. Skipping down the steps two at a time, she tried to push away the thought that the laundresses were the biggest gossips in all of Braavos.

 _Don't be ridiculous,_ she told herself. _You don't know everyone in Braavos. There are bound to be louder mouths than theirs._

As she burst from the stairwell into the dim passage that would lead to her own door, she felt a small prickle of anticipation. She hadn't been back to her room since she had been unceremoniously drug from under her bed and trussed up like a goose ready to be roasted in an oven. Would she find any evidence of the deed, or would _they_ have come back to clean up and hide what had occurred? And who were _they_ , anyway? Someone with a neck wounded just like Jaqen's? That would be easy enough to spot. Or someone made up to appear to have wounds? Harder to spot, obviously. Could there have been some glamour involved? That would mean the perpetrator would have to be a master or priest. Acolytes did not possess such power. The secret of a glamoured face was reserved for those who had completed their training.

 _Soon,_ she thought, feeling a small tingle as she contemplated what it would be like to command that power.

Silently approaching her door, the girl found her heart had begun to pound. She could not account for it. She wasn't afraid; this did not feel like fear. _It felt like… like…_ Her face was pinched in concentration, trying to discover what her gut was trying to tell her. She actually placed the flat of one hand over her belly as her master had done in the night when he asked her what her gut was telling her about his identity. She sensed something; _impatience, or maybe it was... anticipation._ Her gut spoke to her and her features smoothed themselves, her face becoming passive as she moved her hand from her belly to reach it under the hem of Jaqen's shirt. The girl slid the small dagger from the leather sheath she had left wrapped around her thigh despite her master's assurance that she would need no weapon in his chamber. She blew out a slow, steady breath and wrapped her fingers lightly on her door handle.

 _Someone was in her cell, waiting for her_. _She could feel it._

She burst through the door, entering the chamber with her elbow bent out to her side, her arm crossing her body as her fist curled around the hilt of her knife, the point of the steel glinting dangerously just before her right shoulder. Her eyes scanned the small cell quickly, locating her intruder in no time. He hadn't even the decency to look surprised at her having caught him, his face not showing the faintest hint of guilt affecting his handsome features. Her master sat in her chair, reclining with an almost _bored_ look on his face, one leg crossed broadly over the other, one ankle resting against the other knee. He was twirling a small dagger in one hand as his other hand rested casually against the top of his rich leather boot leg, laid horizontally in front of him.

"A girl slept late today," the Lorathi purred, still twirling the blade as he met the narrowed eyes of his apprentice. She had not yet lowered her steel. "Come in, little Cat, lest others see you in such _unfashionable_ attire."

"What are you _doing_ here, Jaqen?" the Cat hissed, closing her door and stepping further into the room. Slowly, she brought her dagger down and slipped it back into the sheath strapped to her thigh. The Lorathi watched her hands tug at the hem of the blouse for a moment before he spoke.

"A man feared for his favorite shirt. The last time a girl tried to take it off, she nearly ruined the neck with her clumsy pawing," he replied, a small smirk becoming more evident as he spoke. "A man is happy to assist you, if you have need."

The Cat demonstrated her best attempt at restraint, merely rolling her eyes at her mentor's provocation, and crossed the small space in silence on her bare feet. She sat on the edge of her bed nearest her master and pinned him down with her gaze.

"Why are you _really_ here, Jaqen?" she tried again.

"A man suspects for the same reason a girl is here. Well, aside from the need to change his clothing. As you can see, a man is appropriately attired for the hour," the assassin explained with a grin, indicating his blouse and breeches with a sweep of his tanned hand, "but a girl is perhaps... _less so_. Although a man admits that a girl looks lovely in that blouse. Perhaps she needs merely to slip on her boots…"

" _Jaqen_ ," she growled.

"Why do you ask when you already know the answer?" her master chided her. "Of course this place must be checked for any clue as to who did this thing last night."

"Did you find anything?" the Cat demanded.

The dagger he was twirling came to a sudden stop and he deftly flipped it around so that he was cradling the blade in his palm, offering her the hilt as he replied, "Only this." She took it and examined it briefly.

"It's mine," she said. "The one I threw. I guess whoever I hit pulled it out and left it."

"Not quite," Jaqen corrected. "A man found it clean and sitting innocently on a girl's table. This room has been inspected, top to bottom. No blood droplets were found anywhere."

"That's strange. Why would they bother cleaning up after themselves so thoroughly?"

"A man suspects they must know what he can do with their blood."

"What _can_ a man do with their blood?" the Cat asked, mimicking her master's Lorathi speech pattern.

"Something very useful, lovely girl."

* * *

With all of the intrigue of the morning and her delay in dressing thanks to her room being invaded by an elite assassin investigating a strange midnight incident, the Cat missed her breakfast. When Jaqen left her, he informed the girl that he was going to speak with the Kindly Man about an assignment for her. He thought he had found just the thing but did not wish to speak with her further about it until it was settled with a certainty. Her master instructed her to dress and eat and then wait for him in the courtyard.

"Armed," he clarified. She snorted, giving him a look that said, _do I look daft?_

"Always," she replied.

"And do not wad a man's blouse," he added with fake gravity, making his expression stern. "A man has seen how a girl treats her clothes." He cast a disdainful look at the damp and dirty shift she had tossed into a corner of her cell.

"I'll fold it with all the care and neatness it deserves," she assured him, her voice as sweet as honey. "Shall I leave it with your petticoats?"

"What does a girl even know of a _petticoat_?" her master scoffed. "If she cannot manage a simple blouse, a man cannot imagine her attempting to don a dress requiring ladies' underthings."

She gave him a sour look, hating how he always managed to turn her jests around on her, overcome with the desire to defend herself though she knew it only gave him more weapons with which to tease her.

"I don't _like_ stupid ladies' underthings or dresses," she spat. "Whoever designed such clothing is an _idiot_. How can anyone fight in those ridiculous outfits?"

"It is not fighting that most ladies are concerned with," Jaqen reminded her. "That is only you, lovely girl."

She shrugged her indifference to the preferences of _most ladies_. Her master gave her a small smile and rose from his place, putting his hand lightly on her shoulder as he did, looking down into her wide, grey eyes.

"The courtyard," he reiterated. "A man will be no longer than an hour." He left her sitting there, bound for his meeting with the principal elder. The Cat changed into her robe of black and white, leaving her master's shirt wadded at the foot of her bed ( _defiance!)_ and left for the kitchen, meaning to sweet-talk Umma out of some leftovers. When she entered the kitchen, the cook was there alone. The woman barely glanced up at her then returned to her work, kneading the dough she would soon leave to rise in time to bake for the midday meal.

"I didn't think there were any Cats scheduled to help in the kitchen today," the woman remarked, and there was a hard edge to her voice that the girl was able to pick up.

"I'm just here to pilfer any of the breakfast that wasn't eaten," the girl returned lightly, moving across the kitchen in a carefree way but remaining wary. The cook's tone had set her on edge. _Something was afoot_.

"Humph," the Braavosi woman muttered, punching at the dough rather harder than was strictly necessary. "I'm not surprised that you missed breakfast. Up late, were you?"

The Cat's skin prickled uncomfortably. _Did the cook know anything of the plot to drown her?_ Spying a tray of cool biscuits, the girl scraped up the remnants of the fig jam she found in a saucer onto two of them and began munching thoughtfully. She would need to approach this carefully if she hoped to get any useful information out of the cook without raising her suspicion. The girl was not concerned about the older woman's possible _involvement_ in the plot, but she also knew that her loyalties lay with those in the power structure of the House of Black and White and _not_ with some lowly acolyte, no matter how fond of the Cat the cook might be. Additionally, the girl couldn't be sure how _public_ the perpetrators of the plot meant for their actions to be. Telling the cook too much might be dangerous for the woman.

"I was up rather late," the girl admitted, careful to keep her tone noncommittal. "But, as you see, I'm well, considering all that happened…"

" _All that happened_ ," the woman grumbled, her tone almost _mocking_. "As if you had nothing to do with it; like it just _happened_ to you."

The girl's shock was plain on her face. Was Umma of the opinion that being bound and gagged and tossed into the canal was somehow the _Cat_ ' _s_ own fault? What had she been told? And by _whom?_

"Umma, I didn't _ask_ for this. Seven hells, I was _ambushed and tied up_!"

Now it was the cook's turn to look shocked. Her hands ceased moving in the dough and then flew to her face, floured fingers marking her cheeks with streaks of white powder as she met the girls eyes and her look was so… _sympathetic_ , and yet angry at the same time. The Cat was actually moved by the woman's profound concern. It did little good _now_ of course, but it was still heartening to know that _someone_ in the temple actually cared about what happened to her. Well, someone besides _Jaqen_ , who didn't have much choice in the matter, she supposed. She was his apprentice, after all, and if he didn't care enough to make sure she completed her training in a competent fashion, it would shame him.

"Oh, sweet child!" the woman said, tears forming in her eyes as she rushed to the girl, wrapping her dusty fingers around the Cat's upper arms. "How could this happen? How could he _do_ this to you?"

"Who, Umma?" the girl asked warily, knowing this was the moment she had hoped for. Umma was about to reveal who was behind the plot against her. She imagined her master's shock when she approached him and laid this bit of information at his feet before he had even had the chance to finalize her placement outside of the temple. She stopped just short of patting herself on the back quite literally.

"Who? _Who?_ That Lorathi scoundrel, that's who! Poor dear, are you hurt very badly? Here, sit," the woman commanded, fretting over the girl and leading her to a stool in the corner. The apprentice was confused by her words and actions suddenly. Did Umma think that Jaqen had been the one to toss her out of the portal? Had she seen the robed man with scratches matching her master's and drawn the same conclusion that the Cat had at first? Or did someone perhaps lie to the woman and say it was Jaqen? If so, who was the liar? If she knew even that much, it would be helpful.

"Umma, Jaqen didn't do this thing. It was four men. They pulled me out of my cell and threw me to the eels. He was asleep in his chamber at the time," the girl explained.

"The _eels_ ," the woman repeated, sounding confused. "Girl, what are you jabbering about? Did he hit you over your head?"

The two women looked at each other with profound bemusement until finally, the Cat said, "I think you'd better tell me what you're talking about."

"What I'm talking about is the fact that I overheard two of the masters discussing how they were awakened in the night by a woman's _screams_ ," the woman said, her tone becoming less sympathetic and more suspicious and judgmental once again.

 _The nightmare,_ the girl realized. Her mentor had said she had cried out just before she bit him. She must have woken some of the other masters. Jaqen hadn't mentioned that she had been loud enough to disturb the peace of the whole corridor.

"And I'm _also_ talking about the fact that the laundresses came through here not so very long ago telling the tale of a barefoot, dark-haired beauty clad only in a man's blouse, slipping guiltily out of the Lorathi's room and into the passageway this morning," the woman continued.

Understanding oozed through the girl uncomfortably and she turned cold, realizing what it was that Umma was thinking. Before she could protest, the cook added the last piece of damning information to her list of the girl's transgressions.

"And then they added that they discovered a _bloody sheet_ on the bed of the chamber this acolyte had only just left."

By the time she was done presenting her evidence, the woman was standing upright, her posture ramrod straight, and her arms were crossed over her breasts as she held the girl in her seat with her accusing gaze. She seemed to know everything that occurred after the Cat returned to the temple following her adventure in the canal, but none of what happened before she climbed the courtyard wall and crept into her master's chamber.

"It's not what it… I mean, that's not what… _Umma_ ," the girl hissed, impatient with her own embarrassment. _She had done nothing wrong_. "I was only in that chamber because… Ooh!"

She gave up trying to explain, groaning because she was not sure how to reveal what had happened to her, unsure of what she could say that would not endanger her safety or the cook's and not knowing what her master would wish revealed and what he would advise she keep hidden at this point. The perpetrators of the violence were unknown as yet, and spreading word of what had occurred might instigate some sort of reprisal. The girl could not see her way to risking Umma's life even though it was frustrating to be accused of something so… so… _ridiculous_ and not know how to defend herself. Finally, she felt compelled to at least try to correct the cook's erroneous assumptions.

"What you're thinking, it's mad," the Cat told the motherly cook. "There is a good explanation for _everything_ you just said and _none_ of it involves my… Or his… The blood wasn't even mine! We didn't… I mean, I would… I would _never…"_

The Cat recognized that she was wasting her time even as she was still trying to justify herself to the older woman. She _knew_ she sounded stupid; stupid _and_ dishonest. How could she explain to the cook in a convincing way that things weren't _like that_ between her master and herself? And why would the woman ever believe her? She was already predisposed to think that there was something going on, considering her remark shortly after Jaqen's return about the Cat flirting with him over crossed swords. The girl remembered feeling disconcerted about the remark at the time, but this was _so much worse._

 _I would never…_ she thought but then stopped herself as she considered what she was asserting.

_Would she?_

Jaqen was like a… father? Brother? Friend? He was _none_ of these. And _all_ of them. And something _more_. Mentor, teacher, guide… She had worn many faces in her life and she now saw that he had, too. Many of them, he wore solely for her benefit. She knew that, even when she didn't completely understand why he did it. He owed her _nothing_ and she…

She owed him _everything._

The rules of Westerosi courtesy aside, she had done nothing wrong. _They_ had done nothing wrong. No moral codes were violated. He would _never…_ She was sure of that. Her master still thought of her as a stupid child, and often treated her as one. Her _innocence_ was more precious to her mentor than it was to the cook, she was certain. Even more precious to him than it was to herself, somehow. It made her head hurt to think about, because when she thought of Jaqen as anything more than… what he already was, and when what he was already was almost too much for her to comprehend and too much for her to risk losing, then she was nearly overcome with that strange, twisting feeling inside of her. In turn, _that_ feeling led her to think about things she could not afford to think about.

_Would she ever? Gods, how could she?_

She was struck with a sudden memory of the feeling of Jaqen's neck beneath her lips; beneath her tongue. She could almost feel the gentle press of his palms even now, calloused skin against her bare forearms as his fingers flexed lazily in response to her touch. The girl dropped her face into her hands, scrubbing away the hazy image of his face when it was so near hers that their lips almost touched, his nose grazing the side of hers through her dark veil. Her skin had almost seemed to burn beneath his touch, the feeling staying with her even after he pulled away to answer the door of their room at the inn; a feeling so deep and so lasting that she swore she could feel it as she sat on the stool in Umma's kitchen though her master was nowhere to be seen.

 _It's not like that between us,_ she thought, knowing that the sensations and emotions brought on by each of the instances of her master's hands on her, his breath tickling her ear, and his seductive purr were all explained by her own absurd, childish desires rather than any feeling of… _ardor_ on his part. She was sure that to Jaqen, it was all merely a manifestation of his infuriating teasing or some lesson he meant for her to master or the platonic affection born of a familiarity that had arisen between them over their years together. And though he was not her suitor or her husband or her lover, what he _was_ to her was _so much more important_ than any of those other things. How could she ever ask for something different from him? How could she want more from the man? How could she even _hope_ that someday he would feel for her something other than what any master feels for his apprentice?

_And how could she not?_

* * *

The courtyard seemed deserted. Experience had taught the girl that such tranquility likely meant her master and the Kindly Man were just about to round the corner, having some terribly important, cryptic conversation about what they were planning for her life. This time, however, her master entered the garden alone. He found his apprentice reclining on a marble bench, waiting for him. She was the perfect picture of obedience, not eavesdropping on a single secret conversation.

"Umma thinks you _dishonored_ me last night," the girl told her master by way of greeting. "Apparently, the evidence is irrefutable."

The Lorathi looked at her strangely and seemed about to ask for more details, but then shook his head as if to say _there's no time_ and instead told her that she was to be given an assignment. The mission was one he felt would allow for her training to continue relatively unimpeded while she performed a duty for the order but also, more importantly, that it provided her the chance to leave the temple, a place where he was still convinced was not safe for her to remain under the current circumstances.

"What did the Kindly Man say when you spoke?" the Cat wanted to know.

"Not much of consequence," her master told her, shrugging. "The thing of importance is that he approved a man's plan."

"Jaqen, why are you _lying_?" she demanded.

He looked at her blankly. The Lorathi had not yet worked out how the girl _knew_ when even his master did not. He was trying to avoid worrying her, not even sure himself that there was anything at all to worry about. He had spoken with the principal elder about an assignment that was discussed in the council meeting while the girl was sparring with her brothers the day before. His sister, the girl's _waif_ , had volunteered to take the mission at the time but when Jaqen had presented the idea of his apprentice taking it instead, he had met with no resistance from either his master or his sister. When the elder questioned him about why he suddenly desired for the girl to be given this particular assignment, the Lorathi had related some of the details of what had occurred the previous night, watching the man's kindly, false visage for any hint of his own involvement.

_"A man is concerned for her safety," Jaqen told his master after explaining her abduction and what followed, including her arrival in his chamber to question him about his complicity in the plot, wielding her dagger and ghosting across the room, silent and tense. What the Lorathi did not say to his master was that were he some other man, she could have slit his throat and watched as he bled out before he even knew she was there. But he was not some other man; he was Jaqen H'ghar, and so the girl had found herself pinned beneath her master before she had a chance to touch her cold steel to his skin._

_"This is most troubling," the elder had remarked placidly, not seeming the least bit troubled. "Why would the girl think you might be involved, brother?"_

_The assassin explained the scratches she had seen which had perfectly mimicked his own and that they were enough to convince the girl that one of her attackers was her master._

_"Extraordinary," the Kindly Man observed mildly._

_"What is extraordinary about it, brother?" the Lorathi questioned._

_The principal elder regarded the younger man keenly and then said softly, "It's extraordinary that the girl had evidence that you were responsible for an attempt on her life yet she still chose to come to you. Her trust in you seems... unshakable."_

Jaqen recalled the words and though there was nothing about them that he could say was decisively suspicious, there was something in the _way_ the elder had said them; something in his tone that Jaqen did not trust. The elder sounded… disappointed? Whatever it was, it was enough to plant a seed of doubt in the assassin's mind about his own master's innocence in this matter, but not enough for him to confront the man directly. The Lorathi and his lovely girl would need to tread very carefully for now. He could not have her charging off to demand her answers from her _Kindly Man_ only to be strangled and then have her body tossed into the bay for her troubles. Jaqen could suspect and speculate and investigate without raising any alarms. He was not so sure about the Cat, and so he did not answer her demand to know why he was lying, and instead deflected.

" _Jaqen…"_ she prodded persistently.

"What makes you think a man tells his apprentice anything other than the truth?"

She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at him, not answering. He waited for her to give in as the stubborn silence yawned between them.

" _You're infuriating!_ " she told him. " _I_ bite my lip. _You_ … do _something else._ "

The girl did not elaborate so her master moved on, telling her that he had arrangements to make but that he would be back for her in the afternoon with more instructions.

"For now, a girl needs a new face. Come."

He took her arm the way he had when he was a Pentoshi ship's captain and she a veiled widow. She pushed aside the troubling thoughts she had had while in the kitchen with Umma and willed her hand to stop trembling as it rested on his skin, lightly curving around his wrist. Jaqen's eyes flicked to her hand, now still, and then up to her eyes. He had noticed.

_Of course he had._

"Is a girl ill?" her master asked her, his tone tinged with concern. "You did not take a chill after your walk back to the temple in your wet shift?"

"No, I'm fine," she mumbled tersely, effectively closing the subject.

* * *

"Jaqen, I really don't want to lend credence to the rumors already making their way around the temple," the Cat growled as her master pulled her through the door of his chamber.

"Since when does a stubborn apprentice care what _anyone_ thinks?" her master countered, holding her repeated disregard for his advice and warnings over her head as he shut the door behind them.

The girl turned her head to peer through the small, high window at the leaves of a lemon tree visible through it and huffed a little. _He has an answer for everything._

"A man must give you your face and you will want to rest for a while and become accustomed to it."

"Yes, so?"

"So, does a headstrong girl think her master will leave her in the cell from which she was only just abducted, with no way to bolt the door, while she is incapacitated?"

"I'll hardly be _incapacitated_ ," she grumbled. "There is no need to be melodramatic."

"You will not be yourself, not fully, for hours. The risk is too great."

"So, masters are allowed to have bolts on their doors?" she laughed. "How very _decorative._ I assume that's all they are good for, since we know that a bolt can't stop a _Faceless Man_ , and this place is absolutely _crawling_ with them, in case you haven't noticed."

"A girl knows that for every spell, there is a counter, if one only knows the way of it."

"Yes," she agreed. "Are you going to teach me the counter for someone sliding a bolt open from the outside? And should I just stand at the door with my false face and stare at the bolt, waiting to mutter some magic words if I imagine the bolt begins to move?"

He shook his head slightly at her petulance and instructed her to go inspect the bolt.

"Slide it closed and look at it."

She did as he bid her and it was then she saw that the metal of the rod was inscribed with a string of strange symbols. She ran her finger over them, the carved grooves in the iron barely palpable but still apparent to her sensitive fingertip. They felt… _warm_.

"Is the heat… is that _real_?"

He nodded his head at her with one curt dip of his chin, and then instructed her to sit on his bed. She noted that the linens on it were fresh and undisturbed. Swiftly, Umma's revelation about the laundresses' gossip rushed back. She colored a bit, her apprehension about being in her master's chamber returning.

"I can't be seen leaving here," she told him, her expression serious.

"When you leave here, you will not be you," he assured her.

There was a cloth on his table, wrapped around something. He pulled the edge of the linen back and revealed the face he intended to give her.

"This one is very new," he told her, "so the effects will be… somewhat intensified. But you are strong. You will not lose yourself for long."

 _What does he mean?_ she wondered. She had never _lost_ herself when taking a new face. Had she felt emotions and fears not her own? Yes. Did she suffer memories and dreams that were not created of her own experiences? Certainly. But had she ever _lost_ herself? No. But then, she had always worn _old_ faces. Perhaps this was the reason why her master felt she should be bolted in his chamber for a time.

"Lie back, lovely girl, and close your eyes," the Lorathi instructed, his voice soothing. When she had done as she was told, she felt several small pricks placed along her hairline in rapid succession. Then, her master dipped his long fingers in the warm droplets of blood that had formed from the wounds and dragged them down over her face, streaking her forehead and cheeks as if applying the war paint some of the wildling tribes were rumored to wear. After a few moments, she felt him fitting the mask to her face, dead flesh against live, melding and becoming one. The girl's head began to spin, but she had expected that, and besides, after her night at the inn across from the Moon Pool, she had a whole new appreciation for what true dizziness was like.

_This is nothing._

In an instant, everything changed. Her heart felt like a stone, cold and heavy and pressing. She gasped for her breath and clutched at her robe, pulling the loose folds away from her body, trying to relieve herself from its sudden weight. The girl felt as if she were being crushed under the burden of the grief of a thousand losses. The feeling was all too familiar to her. It was the blow that nearly leveled a girl named Arya Stark as she watched her father's head roll down the steps of the Sept of Baelor. It was the stabbing pain that pierced her heart when she learned her mother was dead and floating down a river in the land that had once been her home but was now her great sepulcher. It was the gaping maw of despair that a sister fell into after hearing that her brothers were murdered and burned black and hoisted high up for all to see, like a hellish banner declaring that a monster now ruled in the home of their boyhood.

But it wasn't those losses that clawed at her insides and made her gut ache. It wasn't the burden of the deaths of a father and mother and brothers that turned her heart to a hard, dead thing. It was her grief for her _sister._ But her sister was not dead! At least, the girl didn't _think_ she was. But she _felt_ it. She felt a sister's death and she began to wail and the wailing wet her face and streaked her new cheeks with large, endless tears. She cried out her sister's name, unable to stop herself.

"Hellind!"

She opened her eyes and looked around her, looking for Hellind, knowing she wouldn't find her but needing to look anyway. Hellind, more a mother than a sister, so beautiful, so young, so vibrant. She could _not_ be dead. The gods were not so cruel. She searched the dim chamber and did not find her sister, but saw a man she did not know and screamed her fright.

"Shh," he soothed, taking her in his arms. "Remember who you are, lovely girl."

Her heart was pounding but the stranger seemed kind and so she did not scream again but continued to cry, her sadness covering her like a heavy cloak she could not shrug off. He repeated his exhortation for her to remember who she was and she drew in a few great, sobbing breaths before she spoke to him.

"I'm Mattine," she told him, her shaky voice barely understandable.

"No, no, lovely girl," he told her in his lilting voice, stroking her hair and pressing her against his chest. "You are my apprentice. You are the Cat who terrorizes her brothers with her blades. You are the widow who cannot hold her wine. You are the disobedient girl who hides in the garden and spies on men she should not."

She insisted he was mistaken. How could he know who she was, anyway? He was a stranger. She was very uneasy, not understanding why she was there with a man she did not know, not understanding how Hellind could be gone, not understanding why this Lorathi insisted she was four different people she had never met.

"I'm Mattine," she told him, convinced he would see his mistake.

He sighed, pulling away from her and taking her face in his hands, drawing her gaze into his, and she noticed that he had the most _beautiful_ bronze eyes. They seemed somehow familiar to her. Did she know this man after all?

"You are a she-wolf. You are the Ghost of Harrenhal," the man whispered to her, searching her eyes for recognition. Seeing only the faintest glimmer, he reluctantly pushed her further, finally saying, "You are Arya, of House Stark."

A thousand images spun around in her mind; pictures of wolves and boys and horses and weirwood trees and snow and deaths and deaths and deaths. She closed her eyes tightly and shook her head with the weight of it all, her sobbing turning to rapid, shallow breathing and just when she seemed like to faint, she drew in one, great gulp of air and stilled.

"Jaqen?" she asked in a quivering voice, opening her eyes and looking at his neck. She tentatively reached out her hand to touch the linear wounds she found there.

"Yes, lovely girl. A man is here."

She fought to be _herself_ but felt as if she were wrapped in a smothering cocoon of _Mattine_. The feeling was physical as well as mental. Her skin seemed tight and her head cumbersome. She began roughly rubbing at her arms as if by doing so, she could peel the skin from herself and release her body from its prison of _otherness_. Finding no relief, she raked her hands through her hair, pulling at the roots, trying to tug at the bands that squeezed her head until it felt as if it would cave in. She shook her head violently back and forth, yanking at her now curly, dark hair, trying to dislodge the grief that was not her own.

 _I gorged on grief at Summerhall, I need none of yours._ She heard the voice of the old woods witch in her head, a distant memory calling to her; they were not her own words but she felt them as if they were. She _had_ gorged on grief. She had bathed in it and slept with it and breathed it in and out like some choking, oily substance she could never completely cough up. She had experienced grief; had lived in it too much; not at Summerhall, but in King's Landing and at the Twins and at every point in between where her two feet had tread. She had gorged on grief. She did not wish to feel Mattine's, too.

Her master forced her fingers to release her locks, wrestling her arms down and pinning them to her sides. He continued making those soothing shushing noises, sounding like a father trying desperately to console his crying infant.

"This will pass, lovely girl," he murmured, testing her calm after a while by softening the pressure he held against her arms. When she did not immediately start to pull and scratch at herself again, he released her from his grasp. "Did a man not tell you this would happen?"

Somehow, through a fog, she seemed to recall that he _had._ Something about adjusting to a new face and the effects being intensified for some reason. She squinted, experiencing great difficulty in maintaining concentration. The girl nodded uncertainly but squeezed her eyes shut and drew her mouth into a frown, stinting her breaths as if in pain. Her dizziness lessened a little and she was finally able to speak coherently.

"I'm… alright…" she breathed, pressing her palm against her forehead in the manner of one experiencing great regret or a painful headache. "You did… tell me. I just wasn't… prepared."

"Lie back, lovely girl. A man will not leave you until you are ready."

The Cat inside of the grieving girl cracked one eye open to find her master's face hovering blearily near her own. She attempted a smile, which was a sad thing and more akin to a grimace, but said that he need not worry, she would be well enough while he was gone with her warded door bolt and freshly made bed. Her attempt at humor heartened the Lorathi.

"Did a man not say a girl was strong?"

"I don't feel very strong," she lamented.

"To take on a face not a day after it has been removed is no easy thing, sweet child. It is not often done. You did as well as could be expected."

"Why did it have to be _this_ one?" she asked, feeling a slight loosening of the invisible vise squeezing her skull.

"A man will tell all but now, he must make your arrangements. Can you stand?"

The grieving sister snorted weakly as if she had never heard such a ridiculous question but when she arose from the bed, she was forced to grasp her master's shoulder in order to prevent a rather graceless fall. Jaqen placed his hands on her waist, steadying her swaying form and allowing her to gain her bearings. When she seemed less likely to stumble, he dropped his hands and stood himself.

"Slide the bolt behind a man. Do not let _anyone_ in until a man returns," he commanded, then emphasized, "Not anyone."

"I understand."

"A man would prefer for you to rest until his return."

"Well, there doesn't seem to be much else to do in here," the mourner replied.

"Slide the bolt and then rest," Jaqen said again.

"I _understand_ ," she repeated, her frustration with his hovering showing in her tone. _Honestly! He acts as if he believes that I am as simple as Hodor._

" _There's_ a man's Cat," he laughed as he opened the door and stepped into the corridor. "A man shall return."

And then he was gone.

* * *

 _ **Burning**_ _**Bright-**_ Shinedown

 _ **Love is**_ _**Blindness**_ _-_ U2

 _ **Not Ready Yet**_ -Eels


	29. Chapter 29

The girl spent the next several hours mostly occupied with alternating between pacing and fitful sleeping behind the door of her master's chamber. When she slept, she dreamed dreams that disturbed her for not being her own. When she paced, she thought thoughts that disturbed her for not being her own. When she tried to think her own thoughts, she found that they disturbed her as well, but for different reasons.

_Her mother. Jon. Gendry. Jaqen. Eels._

_Things were so much less complicated before Jaqen came back._

She knew that wasn't true, not really. They were no more or less complicated now than before. They were as they _had been_ , only now they were drug into the light; undeniable. The girl was now merely _aware_ of the things of which she had previously been ignorant. _Including her own damnable feelings, and she was not like to thank her master for dredging those up_.

Though she had missed him greatly, both for his unique instruction and, she had to admit, his companionship, it had, in some ways, been easier for her when the Lorathi was away for all those months. The Cat had no real attachments in Braavos save for the one she had to Jaqen, and after he had left her, her only cares were the ones given to her by the Kindly Man.

_This one's death had been prayed for, see to it little Cat._

_That_ _one will spar with you now, go to it, little Cat._

_What three things did you learn? How do you make a strangling potion that dissolves quickly in wine and is tasteless? You are wanted in the kitchen before the supper, the cook has need of your assistance. There is a great lesson in stillness. Obedience is a choice._

Now, with Jaqen's return, she had grieved a brother's death (yet again), only to then be almost immediately filled with the lightness of hope as she heard of Thoros and his visions in the fire. She had learned that there was another meaning to the drowned god's words, quite a literal one, when her mother, once dead, was revived and lived yet again, in a fashion. She had discovered that dragons, both those with scales _and_ those with silver hair and amethyst eyes, plotted in the warm south of her old kingdom among the people of the ill-fated princess who had borne Rhaegar's children. In fact, it was one of Rhaegar's children doing the lion's share (dragon's share?) of the plotting! And, perhaps most confounding of all, she had untangled the truth of her master's devotion to _her;_ learning that while she remained in Braavos, living the life of an acolyte even as she missed her mentor during his long absence, he had been in Westeros, carrying her with him. He had been thinking of her as he carved out the hearts of those she had long wished dead and he had done so even though there was no remuneration for him in the act. There was no reward save a girl's gratitude and ever-increasing adoration. _It had seemed to be enough for him_.

The grief-stricken sister shook her curls at that, knowing it could not be true. The allegiance the Lorathi demonstrated was to Him of Many-Faces and the deaths had honored their god. That the slaying of these two despicable creatures of the Lannisters was a great comfort to his apprentice was surely at the forefront of his mind, but that alone could not be the reason for the act. Jaqen was devout; a true believer. His actions were righteous. He had paid homage to the Many-Faced god in blood sacrifice, and all else was secondary.

_Why, then, did he bring you their hearts?_ her brazen little voice whispered seductively, fanning her doubts; stoking her hopes. _He could have told you what he had done. You would have believed him without the proof you held in your own hands. Why, then, did he cut out their hearts and place them in a chest? Why did he carry that chest across Westeros and the Narrow Sea? Why did he present it as a gift to his apprentice upon his return if he did this thing for his god?_

"Don't be so childish," she admonished herself in a low growl, her lip curling in disgust at the little voice's attempt to support an impossible scenario. "These things don't mean the same thing to him as they do to you." As she said it, she felt a tiny pull from within and it made her feel a little sick. She recognized the sensation as something like _yearning_ before she quickly stuffed it down in her practiced way.

Her own thoughts had become a torment to her, so she opted to try resting again, hoping that Mattine's dreams would be less troublesome than her own unruly considerations and desires. She climbed into Jaqen's bed and pulled his clean sheet and soft blanket over her, noting that since the linens had been changed by the laundresses, they no longer smelled of cloves or rosemary or ginger but only carried the faint scent of plain, clean soap. She stifled the little bit of disappointment that attempted to rise up within her over her silly notion of _missing his scent_. She actually rolled her eyes at herself and muttered, "Idiot!"

She laid her head down upon her master's soft pillow, feeling the fatigue of someone who has cried too many tears. The Cat had worried that she would have difficulty falling asleep with all that was swirling around inside of her head but not long after she placed her now olive cheek against the pillow, she was dreaming. Taking on a fresh face had proven to be strangely exhausting. At first, she dreamed Mattine's dreams and they were mostly filled with anxious searching along dark corridors, looking for something she never found despite her desperation, but after a while, she drifted across the narrow sea to Westeros.

Now, instead of looking through Mattine's eyes as she walked slowly down a dark corridor, peering into the gloom and hoping to find that which she sought (her dead sister Hellind, the Cat assumed), the apprentice found that she was watching _herself_ in her true form, as if from above. Her hair was fixed in a long, neat braid decorated with polished silver pins which glittered and winked like a blanket of stars in the clear, midnight sky. Her body was clad in a fine gown of shimmering grey silk with an overlay of silvery lace webbing as delicate as gossamer, woven in an intricate pattern of interlocking snowflakes, each one different from the next. Her impossibly long, dagged sleeves were dragging the ground behind her like narrow twin trains, lengthier by far than even her trailing skirts. The sparkling sleeves tracked so far back beyond her heels that even when she turned her head to watch them follow her, she lost sight of them as they faded and dissolved in the dim light of the place from which she retreated.

She faced forward once again and walked carefully down the stone stair that led to the crypts under Winterfell. The stones under her feet were encased in thick layers of ice but her foot was sure, her steps deliberate and steadfast, and she did not slip. The grey and silver material of the dagged sleeves whispered over the spreading ice behind her, gathering crystals as they swept over the cold ground and freezing themselves until it appeared that they were made of ice rather than silk and silvered lace. They became heavier and heavier, slowing her steps as she continued her resolute march down the shadowy corridor of the crypt, past hulking stone wolves with faces forever arranged in ferocious snarling and the grim visages of long-dead kings, their swords rusting beneath their ageless hands.

One after another, she passed the tombs and the stern men seated upon them, leaving them behind, her steps now no faster than a crawl. Her sleeves had frozen up to her elbows and were as hard as the ice-encased stones upon which she trod. As she roamed the corridors among the crypts, her advancement forced the crystalline sleeves to trail reluctantly behind her and they made a soft cracking sound in protest as she moved. It was the only noise heard among the tombs, but it echoed off the pillars and cold walls, bouncing back and forth against and across the endless line of sepulchers and the ice covering the stone floor, roaring into her ears until it sounded as if an army of men marched across a lake of ice that audibly threatened to give way beneath their feet. Still, she continued on, gliding over the frost of the floor until she reached the area where her most immediate family rested. Her father sat atop his tomb, rendered not in chilled stone but warm flesh, and looking as healthy and hale as he had when she last saw him before everything went so terribly wrong. He gave her a sad smile and called out her name softly.

"Arya," he said. "My brave, winter girl."

"Father," she choked, trying to reach for him, but the heavy ice of her sleeves weighed her arms down and she could not lift them high enough to touch him. Her hand twitched, feeling the absence of Needle, and she wished she had brought her sword with her into the crypts. She could have used it to cut the unwieldy sleeves away and free herself.

"You are my grey daughter," her father told her. "You are the hope of the North."

"No," she wept, "I'm _no one."_

"You are my grey daughter," Lord Eddard insisted. "Come home."

The longing the girl felt was so strong, it threatened to fell her. She struggled to keep herself upright, the ice now tugging at the hem of her gown, sending fingers of frost crawling up the folds of the skirt, no longer shimmering from the fine metallic threads woven in with the silk but rather glittering with the crystals of ice forming like tiny stars on her dress.

"I want to, father," she cried, and her tears froze on her cheeks, trailing tiny diamonds from her long, dark lashes to her jaw, the cold of them numbing her skin with icy kisses. "I want to come home and be with you!"

"I'm not here, sweet girl," her father told her sadly. "None of us are here anymore." He lifted his finger and directed his daughter's gaze toward the tombs surrounding his. First, he pointed to the vault that held the bones of Lord Rickard, his father, then he indicated the crypt of Brandon, his oldest brother, and finally, his finger moved to show the way to Lyanna's tomb. As he did this, Arya turned and stepped toward her aunt's resting place, barely able to move now, almost totally encased in unyielding ice. The girl came face to face with Lady Lyanna's likeness and saw the hard, grey form of the statue that sat atop the she-wolf's sepulcher. She was confronted by Lyanna's carved face, all delicate lines and downcast eyes. It was Arya's own face rendered in smooth stone, placid, betraying no emotion.

_Rule your face,_ the girl thought, admiring the exquisite stillness exhibited by the sculpture. A crown of winter roses, captured and existing evermore in their blooming perfection, wreathed the hair of the unstirring stone girl guarding the bones which rested in the tomb below her feet. As cold crystals began to bloom on Arya's snowy neck, she felt a crown of roses begin to grow in her own dark hair, arising out of nothing more than the chill of the crypt and her own breath, now visible in the air before her eyes as tiny, floating clouds of frost. The flowery wreath encircled her brow, becoming heavy with ice and then hardening into sharp Valyrian steel which bit into her scalp. Her head bowed under the oppressive weight of the crown but just as she could not lift her hands to her father, she could not reach up to the ponderous burden upon her skull to remove it. When she attempted to shake her head from side to side in an effort to dislodge the steel circlet, she found that the damnable crown had frozen itself firmly in place, dark locks of her hair twisting around and through the razor-like steel blooms and thorns which jutted out at odd angles.

Seeing that her efforts were useless, the girl sighed and stopped her movements. It was then that she became aware of the soft sounds of scratching in the distance. They echoed slightly, and the noise drew her eye down the corridor, past her aunt's tomb, past her father sitting silently over the resting place of his bones as he watched her, and into the inky blackness of the empty part of the crypt; the part meant for the future lords of Winterfell (her brothers and their sons and their grandsons). Presently, an immense white beast emerged from the darkness, silent but for the faint scratching of his claws on the ice that covered the floor. He was unaccountably graceful considering his size and his red eyes pierced the girl's grey ones as he stood next to her, his snout brushing her shoulder in a gesture of affection.

"Ghost," Arya managed to say before her lips and tongue froze and she could form no more words.

Jon's direwolf turned and sat next to her, so close that they touched, his side firmly pressing against hers. His thick coat of gleaming white fur somehow warmed her through her dense cloak of ice. He stared at the tomb before them, the one which held Lyanna's bones, and then pricked his ears as if listening to a faint sound emerging from within it. The frost now slithered over the girl's eyelids, closing them and then sealing them shut with its crystalline strength, plunging her into darkness.

There came a heavy knocking sound just then, like the beat of a drum. It pierced through the ice damming her ears but she could not move or open her eyes to see from where it emanated.

_Is that coming from within the tomb? Is Lyanna trapped inside, begging to be freed?_ the frozen girl wondered.

The knocking came again, louder and more insistent and she fought against the icy tears which closed her eyes, trying to force the lids open. It took all of her strength but she finally managed to pry her lashes apart and looked around, surprised to see herself in a clean, warm, orderly bedchamber, not in the cold crypts of Winterfell. The knocking came a third time and the sorrowful sister sat up heavily, rubbing at her eyes with the heels of her hands. A faint voice came from the other side of Jaqen's door. She was unable to hear it clearly.

The girl's head was still foggy with sleep and so she was slow to realize that Winterfell had merely been a dream and that _this_ was the real world. Finding that she was not frozen and immobile was a pleasant relief but the dream still pressed heavily on her mind and she felt her old grief stabbing at her sharply, pushing painfully against her heart as her father faded into the mists and she lost him once again. Groaning her dissatisfaction at being awakened and still quite groggy, she rose to her feet and stretched, then walked to the door. She threw the bolt back and opened the door, finding a peeved-looking Jaqen standing in the masters' corridor, his arms crossed over his chest.

"Did a man not say that a girl was to open this door to _no one_ but her master?" he asked his apprentice gruffly.

"I'm sorry, are you _not_ Jaqen H'ghar?" the girl yawned as he entered the chamber.

"A girl must have enjoyed her adventure with the eels of the canal much more than a man realized if she can be so careless now," her master observed in the same cold manner exhibited by the Kindly Man when he was displeased. The girl did not like the tone; it was emotionless in the extreme and it made her feel as if she were standing in the dark, alone. Jaqen closed the door and turned to look at the acolyte. She fought to not chew her lip, which was the most natural thing for her to do when she was beginning to realize something but didn't quite have a full grasp on it yet.

"I… I _knew_ it was you," she insisted slowly, not sure _how_ but knowing it was true nonetheless.

The Lorathi raised his eyebrows in a show of mild surprise, but his look was not one of pure belief. He seemed to be examining her face as if he were trying to suss out her lie but finding no evidence of it, he bade her explain further with a simple hand gesture. Jaqen could say more with a movement or a gesture or a look than any man Arya had ever met. She had often thought if he had been in Ilyn Payne's shoes and lost his tongue, she still could have had whole conversations with the man.

"I can't really explain. I don't fully understand it myself," the girl started, narrowing her now doe-like eyes in concentration. "I just… it's like I could…" She blew out a great huff of air in frustration. She couldn't find the words to tell him what it was she had felt and how the certainty of his identity had come to her in an almost unconscious way.

"Was it like it was with the cat in the alley?" her mentor probed softly but urgently.

"No, not… not exactly."

"It seems to a man that the more you use your… _ability_ , the stronger it becomes, just like your sword arm."

This was a comparison that made sense to her. She looked at him and her eyes asked him a question, but he waved his hand at her in dismissal, saying, "This is something to discuss elsewhere. For now, a girl must change and come with her master."

"Where?" she asked, hiding her amazement at the pack Jaqen was tossing on the bed for her. _Where had that come from?_

"The only thing that outweighs a girl's blade skills is her impertinence. Do as a man says and we will speak on the way."

Chastened, the girl dumped the contents of the pack out onto the bed. There were two dresses, plain but of decent quality, two _petticoats_ (which brought a scowl to her face), a pair of sturdy leather shoes, a plain shift, some smallclothes, and a shawl. Some of the things looked familiar, as she had just recently removed them from the body of the suicidal girl whose face she now wore.

The Cat turned and looked at her master, cocking her head at him as if to say, "Are you serious?" but seeing no sign of jesting in his expression, she sighed and sorted through the clothes, grumbling about the idiocy of petticoats.

"If a girl is to convincingly play the part of a grieving sister who now serves as cook in the kitchen of the inn across from the Moon Pool, she must also dress the part. A Cat might not wish to wear proper girl's clothes, but _Mattine_ would never wish to walk about the town in breeches and a leather jerkin."

Of course, the Cat _knew_ all this—she wasn't _completely_ stupid. It wasn't as if she hadn't dressed the part of a hundred other people in her time with the Faceless Men (and, truth be told, for a long while before that as well), but this particular part she was undertaking was a choice of her master, or so she thought, and she wondered why he had chosen to make her _this_ girl when he could have made her _anyone_. Jaqen seemed to understand the question she was considering and laughed a little at her.

"Patience, little Cat. A man has said he will tell you everything you need to know. But first, to dress and begin our journey to the inn."

The girl gave him a meaningful look as she grabbed one of the dresses and one of the petticoats off the bed. This made him laugh more genuinely and shake his head at her.

"You may have your modesty, lovely girl. A man has a small errand," he said, and then produced a packet that contained some slices of bread and a hunk of cheese, explaining, "A girl missed her midday meal."

She watched him leave the food on his table for her and then walk to the door, sweeping it open silently. She almost called out to him to ask him how long he would be, but then decided it didn't matter. Even if he were planning to be gone all night, she didn't think she would do more than sit in the chair and await him. She had enough strange dreams to ponder without increasing the load of them in her head. There would be no more sleep until after she had arrived at whatever destination her master had in mind for her.

When Jaqen was in the corridor, pulling the door closed behind him, she heard him call back to her, "The bolt, child." She rolled her eyes even though he was not there to see her, but then walked to the wooden door and slid the spelled bolt into its place.

* * *

The girl was arrayed in her farcical attire and had been sitting in the chair in her master's chamber for what felt like a long while, trying to think about what lay before her rather than all that lay behind. The exercise was one in self-control and though she struggled mightily, she was losing the battle. As the Cat tried to force herself to think of her upcoming final trial or guess at the particulars of the assignment she was about to undertake, she found that instead, her mind filled with thoughts of Jon and her father and her strange dream. She blamed her lack of focus on Mattine's overwhelming grief and her own empathy for it which was somehow inescapable. She tried to convince herself that shouldering Mattine's sadness was likely what had called up the images of the crypts and her dream of her father and Ghost.

She tried to convince herself that it was her own deep longing for things long lost that had made it all _so real._

When the younger sister of the girl the Cat had poisoned had come into the House of Black and White, seeking solace in death, the apprentice had judged the Braavosi girl harshly for her weakness. She still felt that the suicide had done nothing in the way of honoring a dead sister, but she understood a little better how the younger girl could see death as her most viable option in the face of her crushing woe. The Cat's own woes were legion but the fact that she had never been so _flattened_ by the weight of them, previously a point of pride for her, begin to gnaw at her after having experienced the feelings that another grieving girl had endured as a consequence of overwhelming personal tragedy.

_Is there something wrong with me?_ the acolyte wondered. _I've lost nearly everyone and I can still laugh sometimes. Perhaps I really am made of ice._ Was _this_ the true meaning of her strange dream of the crypts under Winterfell? Was her heart so cold that she could not feel the grief she ought to in the face of her experiences? She nibbled her lip absently under a furrowed brow.

A knock at the door interrupted her moment of self-exploration and she rose and walked toward it. She heard no voice calling her through the door and so closed her eyes and just _felt_. Inhaling deeply, she found whispers, almost like small snatches of conversations, and flickering images tickling her ears and eyes. She saw the door before her eyes, but from the other side. She saw a dim rendering of the Kindly Man's face wearing his bland expression as he said, " _…_ _she still chose to come to you_." She felt a sort of worry mixed with something like affection and pride. She smelled spice and citrus and then saw a more solid image of a hand being raised to knock at the door. She quickly slid the bolt and opened it to see her master with his hand raised, knuckles prepared to rap against the wood planks of his own door once again. He had changed his clothing, wearing robes of a deep blue so dark that it reminded her of the waters of the bay after sundown. The expression he wore was one of a person who had been taken aback.

"A man felt that," he told her in a bare whisper, moving through the door and grabbing up the small pack in which the girl had replaced the clothes she was not currently wearing. Her black and white robe and its corded belt she left draped over the rail at the foot of her master's bed. The Cat was bubbling with questions about what he had meant by his words, what exactly he had _felt_ , and what this meant for her but his look kept her from voicing her queries and they died on her lips. He seemed to be saying _not here_.

The Lorathi put his hand to his forehead and within seconds, he had caressed his own flesh with his calloused fingers and palm and then was no longer Lorathi. He was a wealthy merchant of Braavos, with a face older than his own true face but still very handsome. The pair set off together, merchant-Jaqen carrying her pouch and sorrowful-sibling-Arya scurrying to keep up with his long strides as her heavy skirts swished around her ankles.

_This stupid petticoat is made of lead,_ she thought grumpily. Of course, it wasn't, and it wasn't even very heavy, but the girl was out of sorts after the particularly difficult face transformation. Her strange thoughts and confusing dreams had only served to further her befuddlement. It had left her as cranky as an alley cat whose sleep has been disturbed by bickering assassins.

"Are you going to tell me what I'm to do now?" the girl asked somewhat breathlessly after she had picked up her skirts and drew even with her master in a trot outside of the temple. Dusk was settling around Braavos.

"A certain wealthy and powerful man prayed to the Many-Faced god for a painless death," her master began, his false lips unsmiling as he hurried through the streets of the town.

"And I'm to give him a painless death?" she interrupted. "I'm not sure I understand the need for this particular face, then."

"How many more years will it take for a girl to lose her impetuosity?" said the merchant flanking her, sighing in irritation. "May a man finish his story?"

The girl felt color creeping into her cheeks at his rebuke, but she did not know if it was her real cheek that blushed underneath her false face or if it was the one she wore as a disguise which made her appear to be some combination of Braavosi and Myrish stock. _Olive cheeks probably don't blush as easily as pale Northern ones,_ she reasoned.

_You hope,_ her little voice snickered.

"This wealthy man had his prayers granted by a certain Pentoshi widow who sweetened a maid's basket of figs and sent her from this world. Now, it seems, the sister of the dead maid has prayed for this wealthy man to receive the same gift he paid to have bestowed upon his beautiful maid."

There was a nice symmetry to this thing that pleased the Cat, somehow. A man had his lover done away with, and now his lover's sister would have _him_ done away with. One thing stuck out in the Cat's mind, however.

"How could a poor girl afford to pay the fees for this sort of _gift_?" she asked her master with the poor girl's own mouth.

"Coin is not the only currency the House of Black and White deals in," Jaqen-who-was-not-Jaqen said simply.

_Of course it isn't,_ the apprentice acknowledged inwardly. _The Kindly Man is nothing if not... inventive._

The Cat realized then that she had judged the girl whose face she now wore much too quickly. Mattine had not given up and refused to fight as the Cat had believed. She had not asked for her own gift of death, drinking the dark draft from the pool in the center of the temple so that she might escape her endless sadness by entering the Nightlands to be with her sister. Instead, she had used her last breath and the only thing of value she had left to her, her face, and with it, she had bought the services of the Faceless Men to avenge her sister. Not cozened by the tale of Hellind's death being a tragic but nonetheless _natural_ occurrence, she either strongly suspected or had managed to discover the truth and had secured her revenge upon the architect of her grief. The fact that she did this knowing she would not be allowed to stay in the land of the living and see the thing through spoke volumes about Mattine's dedication to her sister. The younger sister did not have the blade skills or the talent of sleight of hand for slipping poisons into cups and bowls and platters of foods consumed by her enemy, yet her goal would still be achieved.

The Cat's steps slowed and then stopped as she considered the courage and determination a seemingly helpless girl had displayed when it came to honoring her family.

_Killing him will be a pleasure,_ the girl thought and she was not sure if the emotion belonged to herself or to Mattine. Perhaps it was both. She did not pause to consider the irony that both Hellind _and_ her lover would be sent to the Nightlands by the same hand: _her own._ The girl was not stymied in the least by the fact that she felt Mattine's cause was righteous and yet felt no responsibility for the grieving sister's sadness despite her prominent role in Hellind's death. She shrugged, undisturbed, thinking, _If not me, then someone else would have done it. Her death was prayed for, then bought and paid. There was no changing her fate once the Many-Faced god had fixed his all-seeing eye upon the maid._

The Lorathi had walked ahead, so lost in his own thoughts that he had not paid his apprentice much attention when she had slowed her step and fell behind him. When he looked back before crossing the bridge over the Long Canal that would bring them closer to their destination, expecting to find her on his heels, he was surprised to see her standing still, staring down into the canal, looking but not seeing. She was perhaps thirty yards behind him. He doubled back for her, threading his arm through hers and shaking her out of her reverie.

"A girl will want more details of this assignment," he told her, pulling her along firmly, "which will be difficult to provide if she stays on one side of the canal while a man crosses to the other."

"Sorry," she muttered sheepishly. "I was just thinking of how great a sacrifice the girl made for love of her sister."

"Just so," the merchant agreed as they began on their way again. "A great, noble, _foolish_ sacrifice."

"Foolish?" the girl asked, her tone marking her disagreement. "What else could she have done?"

"She could have lived. Does a Cat believe that this girl's sister will thank her for her sacrifice?"

The girl had no answer for him. She thought of Jon. If he had been truly killed and had not somehow survived the attack by those traitors calling themselves his brothers at Castle Black, would he be grateful to his little sister if she managed to purchase just retribution with her own life? She considered it and knew that if such a thing were possible after death, Jon, or his shade, or his spirit or whatever was left of him, would throttle her soundly for such a selfless act. He would want her to live, above all else. Surely Hellind felt the same way about her own sister.

"Anyone so precious to you as to be worth such a profound sacrifice would love you enough to insist that you not make it," her master continued as they crossed the bridge. "And if they are not able to insist because they are already dead, then you should know them well enough to _know_ their wishes, _abide_ by them, and _live._ "

The Cat got the distinct impression that her master was not talking about Mattine and Hellind. Before she could ask Jaqen what he meant specifically, though, he was telling her about her assignment.

"The man you seek dines in the tavern of the inn near the Moon Pool at least once a week," her mentor told her. "A man believes you are familiar with this place, having passed an interesting night there once yourself."

Her lips twitched with her vexation and she gave him a sideways glance that conveyed her lack of appreciation for his japing but she said nothing.

"You will serve as the new cook in the kitchen. Before her death, Mattine requested this man receive the same gift her sister did."

"Simple enough," the Cat mused out loud. "If I'm to be the cook, slipping Sweetsleep into his food should be an easy task."

"Not quite so simple," the faceless-merchant corrected his impatient apprentice. "The man has a guard who tastes all of his food. He seems to be a bit paranoid that the gods will punish him for a certain recent act of hiring an assassin to dispose of his lover."

"Still, a little sleight of hand while passing his table after the wine or food has been tasted should serve," the girl remarked.

"There is one other small requirement, however."

"Hmm?" the Cat asked, already lost in thought about which technique she would use to poison the man's lamprey pie. Pretending to trip and stumble into him would likely be effective, especially since she had been given such a fetching face for this mission and Mattine had a slight but shapely frame. She was small enough to seem unthreatening but curved and pretty enough to be nicely distracting.

"The maid's sister desired for the man to be humiliated, his sins laid bare before his family and friends. He sought to hide his shame with her sister which led to her death. The girl wanted the man's adultery made plain and his reputation as a pious and faithful man ruined."

The Cat sighed and replied, "It's always something with these worshipers. _Make it appear as if he was accidentally killed with his own knife through the heart_. Now, _have him caught in a compromising position as he dies._ No one is ever happy to just deliver the gift anymore…"

"A man is happy to help his lovely girl plan her strategy," Jaqen offered but she declined.

"I think I can solve this riddle easily enough," she told him, her mind already considering the various moving parts of the assignment. For all of her complaining, she actually enjoyed the problem-solving aspects of these assignments. The easy ones were boring; a waste of her talents. "The hardest part of this will likely be passing for a cook."

"A girl has spent enough time in the kitchen of the temple that she should have no problem."

She considered her master's observation and decided he was correct. There were several of Umma's dishes that the girl was familiar enough with to render passably. She could likely have a career baking bread if she found that the demand for faceless assassins ever waned.

_Not likely_ , she thought. _There will always be those who are willing to pay for the gift of death for their enemies._

_And there will always be those who are willing to give it, for the right inducement._

They walked in silence the rest of the way and when her master finally led her into the familiar tavern and greeted the owner, the sorrowful sister noted the same buxom tavern wench serving in the common room. The servant's cheeks were dimpled in an instant as she spied Jaqen, wearing his older, Braavosi countenance, and the Cat felt her own disdain seeping through her pores at the wench's audacious flirting.

_She's appraised his fine clothes and thinks to get herself a wealthy lover who will shower her with gifts,_ the Cat thought with distaste. When her master's business with the inn's owner had concluded, the Lorathi led the new cook off to the side for a final word.

"A man wishes his apprentice to take this assignment seriously," he murmured in a low voice meant for her ears only. "You may believe this to be simple, but there are many things that may go wrong. Remember, this dead man is wary and he keeps a guard. A man expects you to return to him with a report of success and that success will include your own person being unharmed."

"I understand."

"The owner believes that his new cook has a relationship with a wealthy merchant, serious enough that he went to the trouble to engage this position for her. This will enable a man to visit his apprentice in the evenings so that a girl's training may continue."

" _A relationship…_ " the girl started, feeling her embarrassment and her anger beginning to rise, but her master cut her off with a wave of his hand, brooking no argument.

"On the days a man cannot come, he will send a girl's brother to her," he continued, ignoring the way she glared daggers at him.

"Which one?" she spat, still dissatisfied that once again, she was to be thought of as some sort of kept woman at this thrice-damned inn.

"The large bear of a boy. You will spar with him and teach him your two-blade technique."

"What? I'm only just learning it myself!" she cried but he gave her a look of warning and she lowered her voice. "How can you expect me to teach him?"

"It is not a man who expects this," Jaqen told her. "A girl told this boy she would teach him and the Bear expects her to hold to her word." She was about to protest but then realized her mentor was right. She had agreed to do just that after she had bloodied the large boy's nose.

"Fine," she agreed grudgingly.

"Teaching a thing is not the worst way to solidify your skills," he continued. "A girl will have a small room behind the kitchen. When you have done your duties for the tavern, you are free to do your duties for the temple."

"My duties for the temple being the continuation of my training?"

" _And_ the humiliation and elimination of a man who, of his own accord, has recently found himself without his lover," he reminded her.

She nodded her acceptance of her role and then her master was gone after whispering "Valar morghulis" in her ear and placing a gentle kiss on her temple in the overly familiar manner of a lover leaving his mistress in the position he has just arranged for her. After less than a minute, the buxom tavern girl approached her with a wary look. The acolyte returned the woman's gaze coolly. After staring into the Cat's false face for a moment expectantly, the wench finally began to converse.

"So, you're the new cook, eh?" The serving girl sounded almost skeptical. "I'm not sure what was wrong with the _old_ one, but that handsome man came in and had some words with Staaviros and then suddenly, _she's_ out and _you're_ in. Who _is_ he anyway?"

The disguised acolyte stared at the door through which her master had just exited and drew in a deep breath.

"No one to be trifled with," the new cook replied seriously.

* * *

_**Ghosts That We Knew**_ —Mumford and Sons

_**After the** **Storm**_ -Mumford and Sons

_**Glycerine**_ -Bush


	30. Chapter 30

By the time the Cat-who-was-Mattine had familiarized herself with the inn's kitchen and endured a dozen or more sideways glances from Staaviros, the inn's owner (no doubt wondering what she had under her plain dress and petticoat that would make a wealthy merchant go to such trouble for her), it was quite late. The dimpled tavern wench showed her the room where she would sleep while serving as the inn's cook. It was small, located just off the kitchen, backing up to the alley behind the inn, but it had a window, which was nice. The heat from the kitchen kept the room quite warm so the ability to let in a breeze would be welcome.

The new cook noted that there was a thin wooden latch on the door that she could slip into place but it looked so weak that it wouldn't take a man of great strength to kick at the door and splinter the slat securing it, much less a Faceless Man. _Not so much protection as a way to secure the door for a bit of privacy when changing from one plain, brown dress into another._ That was all well and good; a bit of intermittent privacy was enough. The girl needed no protection afforded by the door or latch (spelled or otherwise).

_That's what her blades were for._

"I sleep in a small room upstairs," the serving girl told the new cook. "That way, if any of the patrons needs anything in the night, I'm nearby."

 _I'll just bet you are,_ the Cat thought.

"My name is Olive, by the way," the wench told her and though her tone was airy, she watched the cook's eyes keenly as she spoke.

"Olive? That's… odd."

The plump girl shrugged, saying, "My mother loved them. Olives, that is. Couldn't get enough of them during her confinement, they say."

 _Who's 'they'?_ the acolyte wondered.

"Also, she was a bit of a drunk, and daft besides," the serving girl laughed good-naturedly. "But, I think it suits me. Olives are plump and delicious." After the words left her mouth, she giggled at her own oft-repeated jest, likely something she had picked up from some unsavory sailor rather than a clever line she had thought up all on her own.

The cook gave the plump girl half of a smirk that she hoped would pass for a smile of appreciation of the wench's bawdy humor. It would have to do—it was all she could manage just at that moment. Taking the new girl's smirking expression as an invitation to continue the mostly one-sided conversation, Olive plopped heavily onto the bed in the tiny room the Cat would call home until she completed her assignment, spreading the blanket smooth with her palms once she had settled herself atop the mattress. She looked up at the newcomer almost wistfully and sighed.

"So, what are we to call _you_?" the tavern wench demanded but in a friendly tone.

"Mattine," the cooking Cat answered, not bothering to come up with something new. She might cross paths with people who recognized her false face and it could create problems if she were known as something different that the grieving sister's actual name.

"Mattine… hmm." the wench seemed to be mulling the answer quite thoughtfully. "That's very exotic. Myrish?"

"My mother was Myrish," the girl supplied and for all she knew, it might be true. "My father was of Braavos."

"I could tell you had Myrish in you," Olive revealed with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. One side the the tavern girl's mouth pulled up in a sly half-smile. "They say that the blood runs very hot in Myr. Is that what your wealthy lover sees in you?"

"I honestly don't know _what_ he sees in me," the Cat replied, her voice growing colder and more snappish. She would have to find a _very special way_ to thank Jaqen for putting her in this position. Again. With the same chatty tavern wench.

"I didn't mean any offense," the wench assured her. "I mean, of course you're very pretty; you have a nice figure and you have those big, brown eyes that men like. But there are lots of pretty, shapely girls with big brown eyes here in Braavos. And _he_ … He is _uncommonly_ handsome."

"He is," the new cook agreed, "and he also doesn't like for me to talk about him with strangers."

"Oh, no? Well, I understand. But I can tell that we will be very great friends, Mattine, and not strangers at all after a time. You can tell me about him then. I wouldn't mind finding a handsome, wealthy lover for myself, though," the wench revealed with a conspiratorial wink at the cook. "You'll have to tell me your secret."

 _No, I really won't,_ the Cat thought, but said nothing.

"There was another fine gentleman in here, not so long ago," Olive continued, prattling on as if they were best girlfriends giggling together over which knight was the most dashing at some tourney.

_She sounds like Jeyne Poole talking to Sansa._

"He was a bit older than your man, but still very handsome, and rich. A ship's captain, he was, with the oddest daughter," the serving girl continued. "Anyway, I thought there was a little something between us, but then he had to leave port. It's nice that you have a merchant. He's like to stay put."

The acolyte realized that the serving girl was talking about Jaqen. _Again_. She hid her chagrin.

 _Something between them? Ha!_ the Cat snorted to herself. _She talks more than Loric when he's excited about... anything._

As the tavern wench sighed, the cook smiled a small smile, and it likely seemed to Olive as if Mattine was appreciating her own good fortune at having found such an agreeable lover, thinking her secret thoughts of adoration and contentment inwardly. Olive would have been less thrilled with what the Cat was really thinking, which was, _I wonder what this stupid cow would say if I told her that the captain she fancied she had an intimate exchange with and the handsome merchant were one in the same? It would almost be worth whatever punishment the Kindly Man would levy for revealing secrets just to see the look on her idiotic face._ The newcomer's eyes flicked over the more voluptuous girl's face and body. _Stupid dimples. Stupid hair. Stupid... everything._

The acolyte-turned-cook huffed inwardly, trying to quell her displeasure and trying not to recognize it for what it was: jealousy.

"Well, I'll be back in the morning, to help you with the breakfast," Olive said, rising from the cook's narrow bed. "There are only a few patrons staying here tonight, so it should be light work to start you off. Goodnight, _Mattine_."

The new cook was tired and did not pause to consider the change in tone of he serving wench as she spoke.

"Goodnight, Olive," the Cat drawled in her perfect Braavosi, ushering the girl out of the door so that she might latch it and strip to her small clothes. The room was too warm to sleep in anything heavier than that. Before she undressed, she looked up at the shuttered window, just out of her reach when she lifted herself onto her toes. Hoping to get some air circulating in the stuffy room, the cook used the bed as a step to take her to the tabletop that sat under the window. From there, she was able to unlatch and then throw open the wooden shutters. She poked her head out of the now open window and looked up and down the alley, finding it dark and empty. It was quiet now, but she suspected that at some point, a few drunken _Bravos_ might stumble through and disturb her peace. The inn was too close to the Moon Pool to think she could escape their obnoxious revelry. She spied a large cat with a distinctive tortoise shell pattern on his back traipsing on the side of the alley furthest from her. The girl called out to him.

"If you see any _Bravos_ , Ser Tom, I would greatly appreciate it if you would direct them to engage in their foolishness by some other girl's window."

The cat looked at her with yellow eyes just visible in the strip of light thrown from her window and across the dark ally. He stopped when her heard her voice and then gave her a plaintive yowl.

"I'm sorry, I have no fish head or cockles for you. You should go find one of Brusco's daughters in the morning. You'll have better luck with one of them."

The cat meowed and then stalked off in search of a proper meal. The cook watched him go and then hopped from the table to the floor, landing quietly in a crouch on all fours. From there she stood and removed the small knife trapped in the corseted top of her petticoat and laid it on the table next to the bed. The ones at her wrist and thigh, she left in place. It was always helpful to have one unsheathed, though, as she had been able to demonstrate when she had received four visitors to her cell in the temple of Black and White in the dark of night.

_Perhaps I should have had four unsheathed on that particular night. Things might have gone differently then._

Satisfied with both her view of the door and window as well as the placement of her dagger on the table next to where she would lay her head, she removed her dress and petticoat, deftly loosening the tight laces of the corset (and thinking to herself that her master could have nothing to say about her skills with laces if he had only been witness to the speed with which she removed the uncomfortable shell), and laid herself on the small bed. She said the names ( _Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei, the black brothers who betrayed Jon)_ and then she extinguished the candle on her table, so close to her head that she barely had to move from her pillow to blow it out. Once darkness descended upon the room, the girl fell almost immediately into a deep sleep which was, thankfully, dreamless.

* * *

Across Braavos, on the other side of the Long Canal, Jaqen H'ghar was not so fortunate as his apprentice. After having eaten his supper of fish stew and fresh bread chased with a rather sizable cup of mead to still his chaotic thoughts, he had returned to his chamber and stripped his clothes off, meaning to slide between his freshly cleaned sheets and fall into the deepest sleep he could manage, certain that he would not be awakened by any creeping Cats this night. Everything seemed to conspire against him, however. When he folded his breeches and jerkin neatly and reached over to drape them on the rail of his bed, he found the black and white robe left there by a lovely girl. The Lorathi put his clothes in their place and picked up the garment that did not belong to him, meaning to lay it on his chair so that he could deliver it to the Cat's cell after he awoke in the morning. However, as he carried it across the room, he could detect her scent upon the clothes. Clover kissed by sunshine somehow melded with the snows of the North and then she was in his head, unbidden, smirking at him over her bare, white shoulder, bruises now all healed and gone, her soft skin nearly gleaming in its milky perfection.

The assassin threw the robe into his chair rather more forcefully than was necessary. He turned to approach his bed and then saw the rumpled sheet and blanket thrown aside, the feathers in his pillow pressed and dented to form the shape of a lovely girl's head.

 _A man would prefer for you to rest until his return,_ he had told the girl and for once, she had actually listened to him and obeyed.

He stared at the unmade bed for a long moment and drew a slow breath in, closing his eyes. When he did this, he could perfectly picture her there, reclining against the mattress, and though it was Mattine's face she wore while she slept there earlier, the girl in his head was all Arya Stark and all grown up. Her grey eyes closed sleepily as she placed her cheek against the cool of his pillow, her unbound hair twisting and waving like thick ribbons of dusk against the white sheet and the black and white of her robe. She parted her lips slightly, dispelling one sighing breath that carried on it a name.

 _Jaqen,_ she whispered.

The man opened his eyes quickly, taking in the scene before him, filling his mind with the picture of his very empty, very disheveled bed. He tried desperately to drive away the maddeningly contradictory image of his apprentice which tormented him; the picture of innocence and blood; beauty and hatred; stillness and impulsivity.

_Devotion and disobedience._

He told himself that he _could not_ feel what he felt. Too much was at stake; too much that was precious to him, including a girl's much-battered heart, but more importantly, her life. And his. And beyond that, she was a child, no matter how many marriages and children and houses' honor the Westerosi would expect her to carry at her tender age. No matter how she had changed and grown under his very eye. No matter how he felt inside when he looked at her.

He _should not_ feel what he felt, and so he denied it with all the facelessness afforded him, and walked to his bed, ignoring the dent in his pillow; ignoring the careless way the blanket was thrown back; ignoring the wrinkles in the sheet that he had not created.

He _would not_ allow himself to feel what he felt but when he blew out the candle on his table and pulled his covers over his body, her scent enveloped him again, and he felt it all anyway.

He cursed his stupidity softly in Lorathi. _Of course the bed smells like her, she spent all day napping in it, as he had wished._ He pinched his eyes shut tightly, frowning as he tried to think of the steel he smelled rather than the girl who wielded it, and of the clover itself, wet with dew, not the girl who carried its scent on her skin, and of the cold, biting snows of the North, not the girl whose cheek resembled the undisturbed drifts he rode past on his way to the Wall. When he nearly congratulated himself for mostly succeeding in subduing his thoughts of his innocent girl, he was vexed to find that those thoughts had been replaced by his memories of her playing the role of a less-virginal aggressor.

Opening his eyes and staring into the darkness, he could almost feel her bottom lip, the one she always chewed when she was considering something that took her full attention. He recalled in aching detail its softness as she dragged it along the healing cat scratches on his neck, the wounds with which she herself had marked him. He remembered perfectly her warm tongue pressing into his flesh. Even the _memory_ of the gentle scrape of her teeth seemed to cause his heartbeat to still momentarily, just before it quickened, suddenly hammering away in his chest at a feverish pace, in the same way it had done one night before as his innocent apprentice played the part of the temptress. He recalled how he himself had split into two at that moment, thankful that the part that remained in control of his body was the part that was faceless and restrained, not the part that wanted to growl his pleasure into her white neck and breast; the part that burned to smash his lips against hers without mercy; the part that yearned to teach her how a man used _his_ tongue, and what such wanton behaviors as hers led to in his bed.

He had told himself that he let her continue her attempts at seducing him so that he could observe how far she was willing to go to gain control of the situation. It was a valuable lesson for her, and he was like to learn of what his lovely girl was truly capable. He nearly had himself convinced that he had a duty to allow her to attempt to work out how a girl should use her mouth, her touch, her very breath as a tool to put herself in a superior position. And, in a way, it was true, at least for the faceless part of him that held just enough of his power that night to keep things from getting completely out of control. It was the faceless part of him that reacted to her sudden possession of the knife, throwing her off of him instinctively, letting her feel that _he_ was always in control, making her understand that he was always aware of her plan.

And he was.

But there was another part of him, the weaker part, that hoped that her plan was an altogether different one; one that would lead to him throwing her back onto the mattress rather than onto the floor. He had _hoped_ for it and his hope horrified him. His grasp had loosened on her wrists, allowing her a little freedom of movement, and it was both parts of him that waited breathlessly to see what she would do with that freedom. His faceless part completely expected her to grab for her knife and was prepared to react. The other part, that weaker part, dared to believe she might use her hands to reach up for him and pull him closer to her, an encouragement for all the desire that coursed through him at that instant.

As her master, he would have been disappointed in her had she not used all that was within her power to use in order to escape from her restraint and complete the task she had entered his bedchamber to perform. As Jaqen H'ghar, a man named by a bold and lovely child, he was disappointed that she had used herself in that way, both because he feared for her in the clutches of other men if this should become a tactic she repeated and because he had _hoped... he hoped her actions had been driven by different motivations._

It was pure folly.

 _And it still is,_ he thought, throwing the sheet and blanket back as he muttered _nar 'amala,_ causing his candle to flame back to life. He swung his bare feet to the cool stones of the floor, grasping the edge of his mattress tightly, breathing in and out heavily a few times before standing up almost angrily. He turned and glared at the bed from which he had just risen. Blowing out one hard breath, Jaqen began to rip the fresh linens off of his bed, intending to throw them out of his room and into the masters' corridor, leaving them in a great, Arya-scented heap. When he was half-done, he reconsidered and felt suddenly foolish.

 _A man behaves like a green boy,_ he thought in disgust, immediately replacing the sheets and blanket. He crossed his arms over his chest, staring at the newly remade bed and thinking how his lovely girl would laugh and laugh if she could see her master, the most feared of all the Faceless assassins, standing naked in the middle of his bedchamber, afraid to get into his own empty bed.

* * *

When the cook awoke in her new room, she was delighted to note that the open window had relieved the stifling heat of the small chamber and it was pleasantly cool this morning. She dressed quickly and bound her hair up in a scarf she found under her small table, guessing that the old cook must have left it behind. Once ready, she burst into the kitchen of the inn to inspect what was there for her to prepare. Almost immediately after she entered the kitchen from her little side-room, Staaviros came in through the doors that led to the common room and met her, carrying a large basket in his arms. He was followed by the little pot boy that a Pentoshi widow had met before. The curly-headed lad was carrying a smaller basket in his thin, brown arms.

"Eels," Staaviros grunted, dipping his head toward the large basket in his arms.

"And gulls' eggs!" the younger boy trilled in a voice that indicated that gulls' eggs were one of his favorite things to eat.

"Stewed eels and soft boiled gulls' eggs, then?" the cook clarified. When the inn owner nodded his agreement, she added, "I'll get to work on some bread first."

"Five plates for the upstairs patrons, another five for us, and then we usually get ten or so in here for breakfast. Be prepared for extra, though," Staaviros warned. "Do you think you can handle that?"

The Cat would have given him a disdainful look and rolled her eyes at him, letting him know what an idiot she thought he was for questioning her ability to handle twenty plates of food ( _I am a dealer in death, an almost-Faceless Man, and a slayer of giant eels and you are a mere inn-owner. Do not doubt my kitchen prowess!)_ , but Mattine seemed a sweeter sort than she, and so the cook just smiled and assured her employer that she was up to the task. _And besides,_ she thought with grim satisfaction, _I owe a debt to the eels._

As the cooking Cat set about making the dough for the bread, Olive entered the kitchen with more sway in her hips than was strictly required for the situation. The Cat had begun to wonder if the wench was perhaps not able to ambulate without making her movements an invitation to sample the particular pleasures offered by one so _plump and delicious._ Olive seemed as helpless to suppress her natural allure as the apprentice was to highlight her own.

 _We neither of us have an inner seductress,_ the girl thought wryly. _She, because hers is all on the outside and defines her natural state, and me, because the gods forgot to bestow one upon me._

The assassin-in-training had no way of knowing that across Braavos, in a dim but neat bedchamber where he had spent a rather sleepless night, there was a Lorathi assassin who would vehemently disagree with her appraisal of her own power to tempt men.

The stewed eel and soft-boiled gulls' eggs won the praise of all who consumed them but it was the warm, crusty bread that was remarked upon most. _Thank you, Umma,_ the new cook thought, wondering how the woman who made the meals for those in the Temple of Black and White would feel about the improvement in the fare at a certain Braavosi inn if she knew the change was due to her own recipes being used. _Not flattered,_ the girl decided, thinking she would not tell her. _But, maybe a little proud of her own ability to teach me._

An array of shellfish was brought into the kitchen by the small pot boy and the older boy who had helped him prepare her bath when she masqueraded as a widow not so long ago. The older boy looked appreciatively at the new cook and his face broke out into a broad grin. _He must fancy himself a sort of charmer,_ she thought. _He thinks to tempt this young cook away from her lover. How ridiculous!_ And it was ridiculous, and lighthearted, and not the least bit serious, in the way that only the young can be ridiculous and carefree, because they still have their hope. Not knowing enough of the world and the way of it to have abandoned hope was the gift of the young. _Some of the young_ , the girl corrected herself. _The ones who haven't witnessed too much._ The boy hadn't even completely filled out yet. She could tell he was the sort who got a lot of attention from the young girls who moved around the docks-mostly whores and pickpockets at Ragman's, but perhaps a better class here, near the Purple Harbor.

"I heard we had a new cook. I enjoyed your breakfast this morning," the boy said in a jaunty way. "I'm Will. What do they call you?"

"Mattine," the Cat said shortly, not wishing to encourage him. She had a job to do here, well, _two_ jobs if you counted the kitchen, and she wished for no distractions. She was still working out how to _humiliate_ a dead man with his own sins and needed to concentrate.

"Mattine! That's lovely!" the boy declared, then added, "This may sound strange, but do I know you? You just look... so familiar."

"No, I don't think so," Mattine returned lightly, waiting to see if he would pursue the subject.

"I'm almost certain..." he mused, tapping his lip lightly with his forefinger in concentration. "Perhaps I may have met you in the market a few times? I'm there quite often, buying the supplies for the meals. Do you go to the market often?"

The girl displayed a sad look and then offered in a timid voice, "That was probably my sister. Hellind was always looking for lovely things and little treats."

"You have a sister? And she looks like you? Ain't that something!" Will said, smiling.

"She died," the girl said, her voice registering barely above a whisper. "Very recently." The grief she had experienced while adjusting to the face was fresh enough for the Cat that her statement carried the requisite gravity and sadness to be profoundly touching and very convincing, but she still had to keep herself from smiling when she noted the boisterous boy's reaction to her words. His face had changed from jolly and flirtatious to horrified and embarrassed in an instant. _That should shut him up,_ the girl thought.

"I'm... oh, no, I'm so sorry, Mattine... I didn't... I didn't know," the boy stammered, looking appropriately abashed. The Cat _almost_ felt sorry for him.

The cook said nothing but rather turned from the older boy to inspect the array of crabs and cockles he had brought to her. The small pot boy was setting down his package, wrapped in a loosely woven linen cloth. He smiled shyly up at the curly-headed girl as she pulled the cloth away to reveal the large wheel of aged cheese. She quirked up one corner of her mouth, a habit that was as much her own as chewing her lip, but the boy did not know Mattine, so she did not fear that he would recognize the gesture as out of character. The cheese had inspired her; she knew just what to make for their noon meal.

"What is your name?" she asked the small boy softly.

"Syrio," he told her and her heart lurched. _He even has the same dark curls._ She drew in a calming breath before she spoke again.

"That is a very good name," the Cat told him sincerely. "Syrio, do you like crab and cheese pie?"

"Never had it before," he admitted, but his shyness seemed to be dissolving under her suddenly affectionate look.

"I think you're in for a treat," she laughed, and then looked at the older boy, the one who looked of an age with her. _Will_ , was it? "Will, ask Staaviros how many crab and cheese pies he thinks we'll need for the midday meal. And if anyone is available to help me pick these crabs once they're cooked..."

"I will!" both boys cried in unison and she couldn't help but laugh. It was a merry, tinkling sound that was all Mattine's, not hers. She probably would have snorted at the silliness of their overt enthusiasm to be in the company of this doe-eyed creature, but perhaps she could find a way to use their infatuation with her false self to her advantage. To be an assassin was a fine thing. To be an assassin with an alibi, or a devoted follower, though... that was something else entirely.

* * *

The late-morning sun glowing through the deep green leaves of the fig and lemon trees was creating intricate patterns of dancing light and shadow on the stone path and manicured beds bordered by ornamental grasses in the courtyard garden of the Temple of Black and White. The Kindly Man and his brother strolled together, neither one of them speaking as each considered his own thoughts for a time.

"You do not look well-rested, brother," the principal elder finally remarked to Jaqen.

"No, a man did not sleep well last night," the Lorathi admitted.

"Is there something on your mind that troubles you?" the Kindly Man probed. It was an invitation to talk, to confide in his oldest friend, but it was an invitation that Jaqen could not accept.

"There is much on a man's mind to trouble him," he admitted passively, "but none of it need concern his master."

The Kindly Man sighed in a way that the Lorathi knew meant he was disappointed, though whether in the fact that his brother would not share his thoughts or that his brother had bothered to be troubled by anything at all, Jaqen was not sure. _Worry is not for us, brother._ They walked in silence for a while, the serenity of the garden belying the tension that eddied and pooled just beneath the surface of their polite interactions.

"I know the trial presses on your mind," the elder finally said. "How fares your training of our lady of Stark?"

The younger man raised his eyebrows slightly at the honorific. Every word that had ever left his master's lips was measured, weighed, considered, and carefully chosen. The elder meant something by his use of this address for the girl. _What_ he had meant was left for Jaqen to puzzle out.

"She will make a fine assassin," the girl's mentor responded neutrally.

The elder smiled a little, saying, "Oh, I have no doubt of that."

The Kindly Man drew to a halt under the lemon tree in whose branches a Cat had so recently perched. The elder then sat down upon the bench located there. He indicated that his brother should do the same. Jaqen wondered at his choice of location. Did he mean to show that he _knew_ of the girl's disobedience? Or was this mere coincidence? He awaited the elder's words, wondering if they would contain any subtle clue as to his intentions.

"Soon, our brotherhood will grow," the Kindly Man remarked. "The large Lyseni boy is ready for his final trial as well, despite his apprehension when threatened by young girls."

"Just so," Jaqen nodded. "The Bear has asked his sister to help him develop his blade skills."

"Has he? What an interesting turn of events," the elder said in a tone that conveyed no interest whatsoever, as was his way.

"Brother, if you might consider... There is much and more that a man might still teach the girl."

The principal elder turned his gaze upon Jaqen's face and regarded him without judgment. The older man had always been very good at reading people. The younger man had always been better at _not_ being read.

"Oh, I am certain that there is more you would like to teach her," the elder replied softly.

"This recent... _incident_ with the abduction and the canal has shown that she is not ready. You will recall that a man was away for much of the girl's training. A few more months, perhaps... That would be enough."

The elder drew his face into a mask of mild surprise as he addressed the Lorathi, saying in a tone that he reserved for correcting wayward acolytes, "Oh? I was under the impression that the girl had escaped her bonds _and_ several large, ravenous eels without any harm having come to her. In fact, I had heard that she swam to safety and then snuck undetected into the bedchamber of a Faceless Man to demand answers. That, to me, sounds like a girl who is _most_ prepared for what the order has in store for her."

"Just so," the assassin agreed, "but it was a close thing. With a few more skills, she might not have been tossed from the temple in the first place, just as a man was not taken by surprise in his bedchamber."

"Yes," the Kindly Man said, his look becoming far-off, as if trying to recall an important detail. Jaqen was not fooled by this bit of mummery but awaited his master's remark. "I find it... interesting that she was able to enter your chamber at all. I had thought that the masters all had bolts on their doors."

"A man forgot to slide it," Jaqen said simply.

"How very... _neglectful_."

"Mmm," was Jaqen's noncommittal reply.

The two men turned from each other, gazing across the courtyard at the tranquil fountain on the opposite wall, saying nothing for a time as each pondered the other's words. The Kindly Man at last addressed his brother with his final judgment.

"We have spoken of this matter before," the principal elder reminded the assassin. "The time has come for this thing to happen. While I am well aware of your wealth of knowledge and your desire to equip your apprentice with _all_ of it, you will have to do the best you can with the time you have left. If she succeeds at her final trial and earns her face, she will have an important place among the order forever."

What the Kindly Man did _not_ say but what Jaqen knew despite the elder's omission was that if she failed at her final trial, her future was much less certain.

* * *

 **Overkill** —Colin Hay (tee hee, Oh, Jaqen...)

 **Lovers' Eyes** -Mumford and Sons


	31. Chapter 31

The bereft cook was surprised to find how much she enjoyed the bustle of the inn that first day, particularly the kitchen, and how, with only a little time, her attitude toward those responsible for keeping the thing running properly had softened. She even felt less annoyance whenever she had to interact with the flirtatious serving girl. Olive herself had a pleasant, if somewhat ribald way about her. Coarseness had never bothered Arya, though. She was not a fragile creature; she left such delicate sensibilities to her sister and those like her, all those beautiful and proper ladies who would be like to sincerely faint at _just the telling_ of even a fraction of what the Cat had seen and done in her short life. Even when a mere child at Winterfell, Arya would more often be found kicking up dust in the stables or getting underfoot in the forge as Mikken tried to do his work without tripping over her than be found engaging in the prim, lady-like activities favored by her mother and sister. In such places as she preferred to linger, a girl was much more like to hear bawdy japes and rough language than if she had remained in her insufferable needlework lessons with her septa and her sister. She had always found a certain comfort in the indelicacy of men's language—a sort of what-you-see-is-what-is-really-there feeling. With the polished courtesies of court practiced by all the fine lords and ladies of the important Westerosi families, one never really knew what was meant by the things that these same courtiers said. Pretty words might be nothing more than empty gestures, but they could be used as cutting blades meant to wound the very soul of a person.

Of course, all that fear of erroneous interpretation occurred before the girl had shed the unquestioning trust and guilelessness of childhood. She reasoned that now, with her tutelage among the Faceless Men, she could read the meaning behind the honeyed words and simpering smiles of the fools who called themselves the leaders of the great houses of Westeros as easily as she could read a message drawn from the band around a raven's leg. Nonetheless, even with her new proficiency at understanding that what was _said_ and what was _meant_ were very often not the same thing, she found that she still preferred the straightforward language of those less-governed by practiced courtesy. It made her feel more accepted and mature (since to be spoken to or exposed to such sentiments indicated that others felt she did not need coddling) and it allowed her to channel her concentration to other areas apart from deciphering the precise implication of a slightly arched eyebrow or barely perceptible smile or change in the pitch of a voice.

Or, to say it another way, though she now understood better how to see those things that were false, she still preferred those things which were true.

Watching the irreverent tavern wench move about with her irrepressible combination of joyful energy and undisguised sensuality filled the cook with marvelous amusement and she could not recall immediately why she had hated the girl so much. As Olive brought in the last of the supper platters for Syrio to scrub, the feline student behind Mattine's eyes regarded her, trying to call up the exact offense the dimpled girl had committed against the Cat to spawn her ire. The memory came into focus as the wench bounced across the kitchen to drop the dirty dishes into a large tub to soak.

_Oh, yes. She had flirted with Jaqen._

The cook had come to learn that Olive flirted with _everyone_ , though. She even said slightly inappropriate things to little _Syrio,_ and he looked to be years younger than even Rickon! ( _How old would Rickon be now, had he lived?_ It saddened her that she could not immediately answer her own question. _Nine? Nearly Ten?_ The same age she was when she last saw Winterfell) _._ Arya shook off the moodiness that threatened to settle over her as she remembered her baby brother and returned her attentions to the buxom serving wench. She supposed Olive hadn't intended any harm when she giggled and pranced and gave Jaqen looks that were heavy with some other meaning besides just attempting to _see_. And, the acolyte recalled, Jaqen was not _Jaqen_ when the serving wench had nearly pressed her large bosom against his nose while bringing them their midday meal in the common room. But still…

_She ought to be more careful where she bats those eyelashes and in whose face she bounces her teats, or she might find her name included in a certain prayer._

The cook bit her lip, wondering at the violence of her emotions. It was not warranted, certainly, because to Olive, one handsome man was as good as the next. But then she remembered a ship's captain whispering in a prettily plump girl's ear and the blush and giggle his words had brought forth from a wench. The memory caused her to feel… _jealous?_ It was a sensation she had no way to interpret, an emotion that was new to her, arising in a seemingly sporadic fashion in recent weeks. It was unfamiliar to her, and a little painful, and extremely annoying. The Cat chided herself ( _it's not like that_ ), scowling inwardly at her stupid little voice that seemed about to protest her assertion ( _oh, yes it is. At least, you_ want _it to be!_ ) How she wished she could beat that inner voice into submission!

Mattine joined Syrio over the sudsy tub of water and Olive picked at bits of the leftover suppers idly, plopping her round bottom on a stool as she did, watching the pot boy and the cook clean the dishes. The room was quiet but for the sounds of splashing and the clink of platters and cups, but with Olive around, it could not remain that way for long.

"Do you think you'll see your handsome man tonight, Mattine?" the serving wench prodded with a sigh that suggested a bit of envy and a bit of longing.

"I don't know," the cook replied. She had hoped Jaqen would come and teach her something useful, perhaps how to light candles with a few words, but she could not be sure. He had made her no promises about his attendance beyond saying that he would come when he could and send her brother to her otherwise. She had not made any progress toward completing her assignment on this first day except for adding two smitten boys to her list of assets, and she did not want to feel that the day was entirely a waste, at least in regards to her service to the order. Her mentor arriving and expanding her knowledge of the faceless arts was just the sort of antidote for idleness that she craved. It was also the best she could hope for since the man who was marked for death had not patronized the inn this day, forcing her to have to wait to make his acquaintance.

"If he does, do you think he'll bring you a gift?" Olive pressed.

"Oh, I'm certain that he will," the Cat answered. "He… he has this way of always bringing me _something useful_."

The acolyte had a flicker of memory: Jaqen's calloused palm pressing an iron coin into the hand of a ragged, bloody girl who had been both too idealistic and too stubborn to allow him to rescue her.

"Something _useful_?" the wench echoed, wrinkling her nose at the notion. " _Useful_ doesn't sound very romantic."

The Cat thought of the recent trick of Asshai which her master had taught her and of all the advice he had bestowed upon over their years together. Those things were gifts freely given, and they were exceedingly useful _._ She decided then that despite the wench's disapproval, there was nothing she would rather have from her master than something _useful_ , but then she remembered the two hearts he had carried with him halfway across the world for her and thought that sometimes... maybe the best gifts were more… _symbolic_ in nature.

"Once, he traveled far to the west and brought me back a gift for which I had prayed to the gods every night for over four years."

Olive's eyes widened and she made a little squealing sound, crying, "Oh! Now _that_ sounds romantic! What was it?"

The Cat considered how to answer her, and then smiled her little malicious smile, saying, "It was something that was worth the life's blood of two men."

The tavern girl's gasp was sincere and she declared that it must have been a very great treasure if men had died for it.

"It was," the Cat agreed. "It had to be, to make up for him being gone for a year and a half."

"It had to be," Syrio chimed in, his childish voice clear and lovely to the Cat's ears, "to be worthy of you."

Olive laughed at the lad's words and the cook ruffled his hair and called him a "sweet boy" which made him blush. They finished up the cleaning, Olive even pitching in to put the kitchen in order for the morning, and then they all bid each other goodnight and retired to their beds. The cook longed to change into a blouse and breeches but had brought none with her and so remained in Mattine's dress and petticoat, awaiting her master or his envoy. It wasn't long before she heard faint, intermittent taps at the shutters closed over her window and so she climbed atop her table once again, throwing them open. As she did, a small pebble struck her on the forehead.

"Ow!" she cried, rubbing at the spot. "What in the Seven Hells…"

She glared into the alley to see the Bear, his hand raised, prepared to throw another small rock. He grinned when he saw her and gave her a mocking salute and then called out to her to let him in through the alleyway door of the kitchen. She noted he was carrying a long sack and a smaller pack with him.

"What are do you have there?" she hissed, still rubbing her forehead.

"Let me in and I'll show you!" he laughed. "Sorry about your head."

She just glared at him, and then seeing her tortoise-patterned friend skulking behind the boy in the alley, sent him to exact her revenge.

"Ouch!" the lumbering boy yelled as the cat nipped angrily at his ankle. He kicked the animal away, crying, "Where did you come from?"

"There now ," the Cat called down to him, "we're even. Wait there, I'll let you in directly."

In half a minute, the two acolytes were standing face to face (well, more face to chest, considering the boy's great height and the girl's diminutive stature. Possibly even face to upper abdomen) in the kitchen.

"So, he sent you," the girl stated, feeling a pang of disappointment. She immediately attributed it to knowing she would not be learning any secrets of Asshai that night and when her little voice tried to disagree about the cause of her regret, she told it to bugger off.

"Yes, and I come bearing gifts!" her brother declared.

"Follow me," she told him and then led him to her small room. She closed the door behind them so that he could show her what he had brought without any prying eyes looking in on them, noting that he seemed to fill the small space of her chamber almost completely. Crossing her arms over Mattine's chest, the girl remarked irritably, "You're too bloody big."

He dumped his burdens on her bed, laughing as he said, "I do get that complaint a lot at first, but most girls seem to get used to it."

When she realized he was making a bawdy jest, she rolled her eyes and said, "I know a girl who is _perfect_ for you."

"Oh, come on, Cat," the boy said, moving a little closer to her. "I mean, you're beautiful and all that, but you're like a _sister_ to me."

"Gah!" she cried. "Not me, you dolt! As if I would ever…"

He laughed at her reaction and she wondered if he had been instructed to engage in this ridiculous teasing by her master. Without warning, she clouted his ear with her fist and caused him to release a particularly satisfying yelp. As he retreated from her, stumbling the few steps he could take in the small room, his cloak fell away from his shoulders. It was only then that she noted his clothes.

"What in the… Bear, what are you _wearing_?"

"I'm not a bear tonight," he told her. "I'm a _Bravo_."

She snorted in derision, her eyes assaulted by the clashing bright colors of his ostentatious outfit, made even more mad by his gigantic proportions. Purple pants, blooming out widely just below his knees, the material boasting some sort of orange circle pattern; red stockings (now slightly torn at one ankle, thanks to a cat ambush attack); a flowing, shiny blouse of gold and red stripes. He looked like a Lyseni pirate's stolen stash of ladies silks had exploded over him. He grinned at her and told her not to get too cocky before she inspected what was in the small pack he had brought.

If anything, the small outfit meant for her was _worse_. Golds and bright blues with harsh yellow stockings and a scarf for her abundant hair that was the color of turquoise and jade with red and gold starbursts embroidered all over it. Ridiculous!

"Why?" she asked incredulously.

"The Lorathi master said that if we were to spar out in the open, we ought to look like we belonged there."

The apprentice wasn't sure which was more offensive—her master passing her off as his whore (repeatedly) and naming it "subterfuge" or dressing her up like one of those contemptible _Bravos,_ likely for his own amusement. It wouldn't surprise her to find him lurking in an alley, watching her spar and laughing at her while she was dressed as some fanciful bird of the Summer Isles. Rolling her eyes at the gaudy clothing, she inspected the larger package. It was a long, rough spun sack that had clinked and clattered when the Bear-become- _Bravo_ dropped it. _The weapons, then._ She opened the sack, expecting to see training swords and was surprised to see fine, sharp steel inside.

"He wants us to spar with these sharp edges? Has he lost his senses?"

The boy shrugged, telling her, "He said it wasn't safe for us to duel in the streets with blunted swords. Someone might notice and even if they didn't, we had to be prepared in case a brazen _Bravo_ decided to challenge one of us to a duel. He wasn't willing to risk having you try to defend yourself with a training sword."

The girl snorted, then scoffed, "I don't need a sharp edge to fend off those preening peacocks." She gave her brother a meaningful look and his expression showed that he, too, remembered the damage she could do with a dull blade.

She thought of Syrio, the First Sword of Braavos, and the devastation he had wrought with nothing but a wooden stick. _That_ was what she aspired to. Fine steel was a lovely thing, but being able to make a deadly weapon of _anything_ was a much more useful skill than the simple mastery of swordplay. Her mentor had once told her that she needed to be acquainted with more typical Westerosi weaponry in the event that she found herself without Needle, so, it stood to reason that she should be able to kill a man with a blunt object as well, should the circumstance arise when no sharp edges were available to her and there was a man nearby who needed killing.

_The world had no shortage of men who needed killing._

"Well, these edges _are_ sharp, so go easy on me," her brother the _Bravo_ pled.

She rolled her eyes at him again and said, "You're not scared of a _little girl_ , are you?"

"A little girl?" he laughed shortly, eyeing her up and down. "No, never that. But I _am_ scared of _you."_

The Cat cocked Mattine's head, fixing the Bear with her false doe eyes, snorting at him.

"Well, you're no little girl!" the Lyseni protested. "You're a demon _masquerading_ as a little girl!"

She quirked up one corner of her mouth in her customary way. _A demon masquerading as a little girl?_ Oh, she liked that. She liked that very, very much, indeed.

* * *

The two _Bravos_ from the House of Black and White were resting near the Moon Pool, having just utterly exhausted themselves with their swords. The Cat was crouched down with her back to the low wall of the famous fountain while her brother sat on the cobblestones in front of her facing toward her and the pool. The Bear had been near to hopeless while trying to wield two longswords but the Cat advised him not to worry too much, as he was nearly as hopeless with one greatsword and so by comparison, he wasn't all that bad with the new technique. She gracefully ducked his resultant irritated punch and spun around behind him, landing one solid blow to his bottom with the flat of her sword. He grunted at her but retreated beyond her reach rather than waste his time attempting to retaliate. After that last humiliating exchange, the Bear had admitted to being utterly defeated and that was when they decided to seek respite by the Moon Pool.

She had actually taken it easy on him, as he had requested, mostly just trying to make him comfortable fighting with his two hands clenching two separate weapons rather than both of them wrapped around one giant sword. It was a good thing she was quick, though, as a few of his awkward blows, had she not avoided them, could have seriously wounded her since they were levied with good steel. He was bad enough thus far with the new style to only rarely be a threat to her, but also bad enough that he could not control his sharp edge adequately to guarantee her safety. _Good practice for the real world,_ she thought as she danced out of his way a few times.

As for herself, she had been very careful not to slice off anything _necessary_ from her brother, though his _Bravo_ costume hadn't fared so well. One sleeve, he finally just tore off as it was beyond repair. In fact, it had been hanging so open that the strip of silk that had been sliced (causing it to trail downward like loose ribbons in a maiden's hair) actually got caught up with his blade as he swung it. His ballooning breeches were rather more _vented_ than they had been to start. At one point, his sister advised him to remove the shirt completely because with the way the remaining tatters were waving in the breeze, it looked like he was hoisting his banners and some sellsword company could conceivably try to rally to him.

"That would be inconvenient," the Cat had told him with a grin. "How am I to spar if you're off conquering Ragman's Harbor with your sellswords?"

"You just want to see me half-naked," he had teasingly accused her with a laugh. She had smirked at that and slapped his belly hard with her blade then, earning a loud "Oomph!" from his lips.

"Only so I can inspect your _many_ bruises and wounds to know if you have need of a maester's care," she had countered, grinning widely.

For her own part, her comfort with her two blades had grown and she began to feel that her arms could function independently from one another, even while they still depended on each other for balance and counterbalance. It was exhilarating to imagine being able to attack or defend against two separate foes at the same time, even as they pressed her from opposite sides and with different styles. _Not yet,_ she thought, _but soon._ Now, sitting at the fountain and resting, the Lyseni Bear was discussing her prowess.

"I just don't understand how a wisp like you can be so overpowering," her brother moaned.

The Cat laughed at him but made no answer. She honestly wasn't sure herself. _Instinct_ was difficult to explain. Instead of responding to her brother's question, she deflected.

"I'm no wisp," she protested. "You only think that because you're so monstrously large. It's not normal, really. Some might even call it ridiculous."

 _He's as big as the Hound, at least,_ she thought, appraising her brother. A hazy memory of her scarred former captor and companion filled her mind then; a memory of him begging for mercy, and finding none in her. _Well, he's as big as the Hound_ was _, at any rate. There's not like to be much left but a pile of picked-over bones by now._

The Bear smirked at the Cat and said, "No, you're a wisp. If I wasn't sure before, I am now."

She figured he was referring to her indelicate actions of a couple of hours past, when he had brought her the silly raiment and she hadn't thought twice about stripping down to her small clothes before him to don the stupid outfit. For all of her shyness before her Lorathi master, it had never occurred to her to be modest or ashamed of her body in front of her brothers. Of course, this wasn't strictly her body; it really belonged to a grieving sister (which also may have played a role in that particular demonstration of careless boldness by the Cat), but still, a body was just a means for wielding weapons and fulfilling the orders of the Many-Faced god. She could not understand what made people get so _squirrely_ about it all the time.

 _And why do you get so squirrely about it when it's Jaqen who is there to see you?_ her meddlesome little voice whispered.

She ignored the question and tried to focus on what the Bear had just said. It was amusing to her that he seemed to think she should be modest with a body that was not her own.

The female _Bravo_ laughed at her large companion, saying, "You don't know what you're talking about. You didn't see _my_ body. This one is just a farce."

The boy snorted and said, "I have _always_ appreciated a good farce!"

She just shook her head at his false bravado, recalling how he had reacted when she began stripping her dress and petticoat from Mattine's body so that she might replace it with the bright silks her master had sent for her.

_"Gods, Cat!" the boy had cried, his face taking on a particularly beet-like hue. He turned his back to her and placed his large hands on his hips._

_She had laughed at him then, telling him not to be such a shy little maiden as she slipped into her striped breeches, though she wasn't quite sure the word "breeches" really applied to the ballooning, floaty pants._

_"If you want me to introduce you to Olive, you're going to have to develop a thicker skin or at least curb your tendency to be so easily shocked. Otherwise, you might faint straightaway from her brashness, and that will never do!"_

_"You're so bloody evil," the Bear growled at her, his back still turned._

_"You can turn around now, your holiness. I'm decent."_

"It's not your borrowed body I mean, anyway," her brother continued, seemingly more bold now that she was fully clothed and they were outdoors, in a public place. "I saw you once, in the temple."

The girl's expression turned quizzical.

"Not so long ago, when you were leaving the bath," he continued. "I had a hard time believing that the delicate little woman's body wrapped in that wet linen was capable of what you can do with it when you're dueling."

 _Was there no privacy in the temple? Who_ hadn't _seen her leave the bath that night?_

"There has to be some sorcery at play," he insisted, and he only seemed to be _half_ -joking.

"You can't understand it because your mind is as slow as your moves," his sister spat. "Men always underestimate women. I mean to prove that they do it to their own detriment."

"Careful, Cat," the boy warned with mock gravity, "One of these days, some man will _not_ underestimate you and you'll be conquered and tamed."

"Never!" she half-hissed, half laughed, springing from her crouched position and circling him _quick as a snake_ to pounce on his back. He jumped up, carrying her into the air with him, laughing as he swung her around. Her arms clutched around his neck as he whirled like a top, and she grasped his waist with her legs to keep from being thrown off of him with the force he created by his motion. Her head spun dizzily and she laughed and laughed, pleading with her brother to stop or she would be sick.

"No more!" she cried out between giggles.

The boy obliged her and stopped, stumbling a few steps but managing to right himself without dropping his delighted burden. He then set her down gently, his arm wrapped protectively around her shoulders until she regained her balance. It made her feel half a child, reminding her of her horseplay with her brothers at Winterfell. Then she suddenly felt sad and her giggling died. Her brother sensed her sudden shift to moroseness and pulled his thick arm tighter around her.

"I have people I miss sometimes too," he admitted quietly, somehow understanding her mood.

 _Maybe his mind is not so slow after all_ , the girl thought, pressing her cheek against his chest and letting out a slow breath.

"It's much better when I'm _no one_ ," he admitted.

"Yes," she agreed in a whisper. "Sometimes it is."

Across the plaza, on the opposite side of the Moon Pool, loitering just outside of the entrance to a raucous and popular tavern, stood a drunken sailor. He was leaning against the front edifice of the place just to the side of the window nearest the door. Though the two _Bravos_ took no special note of him, the place being a particularly busy haven for drunken sailors, he was watching _them_ intently. The seemingly-inebriated sailor scrutinized the strange scene playing out before him with keen interest through beautiful, bronze-colored eyes that emoted a sort of deep _longing._

There was no one near enough to him to hear when he sighed and whispered, "Lovely girl."

* * *

It was two more days before the cook saw the man she was meant to kill. She would have known him even if he hadn't had his guard obviously posted to his right. Something in her, _in Mattine_ , knew him. He wore a sad expression but it brightened considerably when Olive spoke with him, telling him what was being served that day from the Cat's kitchen. The cook almost laughed when she realized that she had indeed made lamprey pie that day. Her thoughts from a few days back of poisoning this wealthy man's lamprey pie with Sweetsleep (deftly poured over his food as she pretended to trip and fall) were, at least in part, prescient.

 _Though you'll not die today, my lord_ , _despite the appropriateness of the meal,_ the Cat thought. _At least not by my hand._ Today, she would merely observe. And learn.

The young assassin mostly caught glimpses of the man as the door to the common room was opened at frequent intervals, allowing Olive to carry food out and Will to bring dishes in. Syrio was happily humming some tuneless song as he scrubbed away at the returning dishes and ran out every so often to help with some small task, either with the diners or upstairs with the inn's patrons. The boy had boundless energy (like most boys of his age) and moved with a grace that seemed so appropriate to her, given his name. _Maybe she would try to teach him a little swordplay. He might be a natural._

Olive came in to ask for the young boy's help in clearing the guarded man's table of his platters because several people had finished dining all at once and there was too much for her to carry alone. Will was fetching water for one of the upstairs patrons who desired a bath and could no longer help her. The young boy practically skipped out after the wench happily and the cook wondered if he might be perhaps _too_ happy to make a Faceless Man.

 _If he has even a quarter of the agility and instinct of Syrio Forel, he'd be a rare addition to the order though,_ she mused to herself, gazing after the boy with an indulgent wistfulness.

The Cat pushed the thought aside, scolding herself for her baseless sentimentality. She had been sent to the inn in order to complete a task, one sanctioned by Him of Many Faces. There was no instruction to adopt precious pot boys who shared a name with her beloved _dancing master._ Right then, the girl resolved to distance herself from the young Syrio (the little moppet reminded her so much of Rickon that it was hard for her to avoid forming an attachment, though the similarity was probably a creation of her imagination more than any real commonality between the two boys. It had been so long since she'd seen Rickon, she wasn't even sure if the face she pictured in her mind when she thought of her youngest brother truly belonged to him).

She had no sooner made her vow to stop thinking of the little pot boy as a possible apprentice when she heard a crash and then his plaintive cry. Instinctively, she dropped the tankard she was about to replace in its cupboard, turning toward the door through which the sound had just come. The Cat ran toward the child's voice _swift as a deer._

As Mattine burst through the door and into the common room, her eyes locked onto little Syrio, struggling against the choking grasp of the wealthy man's guard. The boy's small face was becoming red and he was dangling a good twelve inches off the floor as his little feet kicked back and forth. The guard was drawing a knife and he was too far away for the Cat to reach him before he used it, so instead, she cried out in Mattine's voice.

"No! No, please! Please don't hurt him!"

She ran to the boy and the guard was forced to choose as she made her rapid approach. Sensing the girl could be more of a problem than the child ( _now there's a smart man_ , the little voice said as she noted the guard's identification of her as a potential danger), he allowed the boy to drop to the floor but kept hold of his scrawny brown arm and raised his knife, prepared to defend his charge if the girl should prove to be a threat. Hellind's lover, for his part, looked thoroughly flummoxed by the whole scene and sat mutely in his place, not moving at all.

The cook snatched at Syrio, pulling him away from the guard and his steel, demanding to know what the problem was as she pushed the boy behind her skirts. Olive approached the wealthy man's table, laughing lightheartedly, attempting to diffuse the tense situation. The Cat, ever wary despite the frightened and confused expression she pulled Mattine's face into, slipped the fingers of her left hand slowly beneath her right sleeve, preparing to remove the blade there if need be.

"Oh, it was a silly misunderstanding, wasn't it, Syrio?" the serving wench prattled animatedly, seemingly oblivious to the danger they were all in. "I asked Syrio to help me clear the table but the clumsy boy tripped and dropped a bit of crockery. Of course it was _smashed to bits_. Staaviros will have your hide for that, boy!"

The guard interrupted Olive gruffly, accusing Syrio of picking up a sharp shard of the broken pottery with the intention of stabbing the wealthy man's throat.

"Oh, no! No, Syrio would never do _that_ would you, boy?" Olive laughed, amused by the sheer ridiculousness of the assertion. "He's barely more than a baby! He means your master no harm, I assure you! He's only a bit clumsy, is all."

All of the commotion had brought Staaviros from the back and he begin plying the two men with his profuse apologies for the incident and reassuring the other few patrons still left in the common room that all was well. The wealthy man still had not spoken but Mattine could feel his eyes boring into her face with an uncomfortable heat. She turned to look at him, thinking, _I wasn't planning to do this yet, but I suppose the plans are now changed._ She slowly removed her fingers from the blade, leaving the steel in place, and moved one hand behind her back.

"My word, child," the seated man breathed. "Who _are_ you?"

"I'm Mattine, my lord," the girl replied, gently pushing Syrio further away from her and waving at him from behind her back to indicate that he should leave for the kitchen _now_.

"Mattine… Mattine?" he questioned thoughtfully. "Mattine, do you have a sister?"

"Did have, my lord," the cook replied, casting her eyes down in sorrow, borrowing the gesture from Lady Lyanna's likeness atop her tomb.

"Yes, yes of course," the man replied quickly. "I should have known immediately. The _look_ of you... She was a member of my household staff. I am terribly, terribly sorry for your grief."

The Cat suppressed an urge to bury her blade in his temple and instead nodded demurely, her eyes still averted in sorrow, demonstrating to perfection the look of a girl who still grieves deeply but is trying her very best not to allow tears to spill in front of one of her betters.

"Do you work here, child? I did not know Hellind's sister worked. Or that she was so grown up… and so _lovely._ "

He may as well have licked his lips for all the lust evident in his tone. The Cat felt the bile rise up in her throat and this time, instead of wondering if the reaction was hers or Mattine's, she _knew_ it belonged to them both.

"Yes, for a few days now," the cook answered him shyly. "After Hellind… well, I had to find some way to support myself."

"My dear child, why did you not come to me?" he asked and the Cat wanted to laugh in his face.

 _Because, my lord, she went to the Faceless Men, and they agreed to give her everything she asked for, including your life,_ the assassin thought. _I doubt you would have been so obliging._

"I… I didn't want to impose," Mattine answered meekly, turning her eyes toward the man, looking like the very essence of innocence and humility, and so very like her sister.

"Nonsense, girl! It's settled. You'll have a place in my household. Hellind… Well, she is missed very much," he said, having the effrontery to appear sad, but then quickly added, "She was most beloved by my wife and the other servants."

 _She was most beloved by her master, who only wanted her in his bed as long as it was not inconvenient_ , she corrected him mentally.

"Oh, you're so kind! But I… I can't. Staaviros needs me here and I couldn't abandon him after being here such a short time."

The man leaned toward her over his table and said in low tones that hinted at his lascivious nature, "I can be _very persuasive,_ Mattine. Just say you'll think about it, and we'll speak again. Soon."

"Yes, my lord, I'll think on the matter. Thank you, my lord!"

The girl scurried back to the kitchen with as much nervousness as she could conjure at the moment, hoping to give the impression of a silly, harmless girl. When she burst through the doors, Olive was comforting a shaken Syrio, her arms around him, shushing him just as Jaqen had done for his apprentice when she took Mattine's face and then tried to peel off her own skin.

 _Seven Hells, why did I just think of that?_ the Cat wondered.

"That was a close thing," Olive said to the cook, and her voice had none of its characteristic buoyancy and flirtatiousness. "That guard would have put that knife through his neck." She squeezed the pot boy tighter then, as if to protect him from the ill intentions of the wealthy man's guard. The wench's mouth was drawn into a frown and her dancing eyes seemed filled with more hatred than the Cat could have imagined the tavern girl capable of summoning. She could not account for it.

"Syrio," Olive whispered as she pulled back from him and put her hands on his shoulders, "you must be more careful."

Mattine gave them both a strange look, trying to puzzle out what was happening and having no luck. Somehow, though, she knew that there was much more to Olive than she had first believed. She walked slowly toward the pair, her false eyes illustrating her curiosity.

"Thank you for saving me, Mattine," the boy said, his voice quivering slightly.

"There is no need," the cook told him gently, placing her hand on his head, letting his silken curls pass through her fingers. _His hair is so fine. He really is barely more than a baby._ "When I saw that man eating in the inn with his guard on duty, I knew he must be a bit paranoid, but he's completely mad if he thinks a little boy like Syrio would be trying to kill him."

"He is very mad, but he has reason to believe a little boy like Syrio might try to kill him," Olive confided softly.

"Oh? What reason could he have for such an outlandish fantasy?"

"Only that Syrio _was_ trying to kill him."

The cook's look of astonishment was genuine. The Cat rifled through all of her possible responses to such a confession and settled on, "But… _why_?

"Because he's our father, and he killed our mothers."

The pieces fell into place with a nearly audible _click_. A wealthy man, purportedly a paragon of virtue, esteemed in his temple and social circle, a leader in the city with powerful friends, philanders his way around Braavos. He fathers bastards with impunity but when his wife threatens to expose his follies if he does not give up his current mistress, he pays a hefty sum to a certain order of assassins for their unique services. And then he does it again. And again.

Until one day, one of those misbegotten children (or was it _two_ ) intended to have his vengeance.

 _A mother is murdered and a child awaits his chance to exact revenge on her killer. This is a story I know well,_ Jaqen's apprentice realized. _This boy really is a Faceless Man in the making._

Mattine knelt down before the boy, taking his face in her hands and looking into his near-black eyes for a long time. When she spoke, she ignored her previous vow to stop thinking of the boy and made a new vow, this one to the boy himself.

"Do you trust me, Syrio?" she asked him softly. When he bobbed his little head to her, she continued, "I promise you, I will take care of this man. You are to do _nothing_ that I do not tell you to do. Not ever. _Nothing_. Do you understand?"

Syrio nodded slowly, his eyes growing wider, never leaving hers.

"I will take care of this man," she told him, placing her hand over her heart. "He will never hurt you again. This is my solemn vow."

After Mattine rose, Olive gave her a piercing look, but merely pressed her lips tight and gave a sharp nod to the cook. It seemed a gesture of gratitude and understanding and it gave the Cat the queerest feeling that the tavern wench might know more than she was letting on. A few moments later, they all resumed their work as if nothing had ever happened. Syrio continued washing dishes, the cook continued straightening the kitchen, and Olive bounced her way around the common room, presenting a convincing image of a silly, lusty serving girl. No more was said about the incident. None of them were very hungry after all that had transpired, but though she ate nothing herself, the cook insisted that Syrio at least have a bit of cheese and bread.

When the hour grew late, they all drifted to their various sleeping quarters and the Cat entered her small chamber. She realized with consternation that she had forgotten to throw open the shutters covering the window and the little room was boiling. She hopped atop her table in the usual fashion and opened the window so that later, after she sparred with her brother, she might return to a room with a more reasonable temperature.

As she hopped down, she had a little trouble catching her breath, finding her corset felt much tighter than usual. She decided take the horrid thing off and change into the _Bravo_ silks before her sparring partner arrived. As she pulled the small sack full of the laughably bright clothes from under her bed and dumped them out on the mattress, she thought of what she had learned today about the wealthy man and her _friends_ here at the inn. A small kernel of doubt began to grow in her heart when she thought of Hellind. She assumed the story she was told about the reason for the girl's death was the truth, but what if the order was only made aware of part of the truth? Or, what if the council knew but had kept the complete truth from her? _Could Hellind have been with child? Was the prayer of the wealthy man a prayer for two deaths, not one?_ Two deaths would honor the Many-Faced god as well as one, she knew, but for the order to take payment for the death of a child growing inside of its mother seemed...

She had to turn her thoughts away from the path they were taking. _Worry is not for us._ The heat and the corset and the events of the day made her feel light-headed and considering that she might have been complicit in the death of a babe bothered her more than she could have imagined. She tried to focus on what she would teach the Bear tonight when he arrived in _yet another_ silly _Bravo_ outfit (the one from last night being fit for no more than rags now, but that was the danger of sparring with sharp steel). Each night, Jaqen had sent the Bear to her and though her brother was still mostly awful, she felt her own skills improving, which pleased her. Her master had been correct—teaching was not the worst way to solidify her skills. She actually looked forward to her time with her brother now, though she still resented the clothes.

The girl had told the Bear that she would leave the kitchen door unlatched for him and that he should just come in when he was ready to play at being _Bravos_ again. It seemed near his usual arrival time, so she was expecting him at any moment. She was in her room, removing her dress and pulling at the laces on her corset when she heard him walk in. She didn't turn to face him, knowing his tendency toward coloring the most awful shades of red if he even _thought_ he might risk glimpsing her breast or thigh.

"Give me a minute," she told him, working to untie the knot at the top of her corset that the laces had somehow formed during all the commotion of the day. Her fingernails were too short and she was having trouble loosening it. Instead, she seemed to be drawing the whole corset tighter in the process. She was becoming rather breathless. "I just need to unlace this damnable contraption."

The next thing she knew, his arms were under hers and he had taken the knot from her. In order to get more exposed lacing with which to work, he pulled the corset a notch tighter. The technique was a success and he deftly worked the knot loose with unbelievable speed but she could only take the shallowest of breaths due to the constriction of her ribs during the process.

"A man wonders why his lovely girl insists on wearing clothes she cannot manage on her own," whispered a voice in her ear. "Was she perhaps anticipating her master's arrival in time to assist her?"

It made perfect sense that with all the excitement that had occurred under the inn's roof, Jaqen would choose that particular night for his first visit to his apprentice rather than sending her brother to spar with her in his stead. And, of course, she would be having some unusual clothing problem just as he arrived. And naturally, he would find some reason to wrap his arms around her and make her feel as if her skin prickled with chills and burned with heat all at once. Undoubtedly, he would have to speak to her in the common tongue, with his ridiculous Lorathi accent. And, of course, he would smell of ginger and cloves and…

Her breath caught in her throat and her heart began fluttering for no reason she could identify. _What is this?_ she wondered as an odd sensation began creeping up from her toes to her legs and then to her belly and finally reaching into her chest. Oh, gods, was she going to _faint_? No! She would never do something so stupid! Faint in her master's arms like some stupid _lady_ without the sense to wear clothes that actually allowed a woman to breathe properly?

 _Not bloody likely!_ the girl told herself gruffly, and then the world spun and went black.

* * *

 _ **Nothing Else Matters**_ -Metallica

 ** _Everlong_ -**Foo Fighters


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tiny bit of foul language at the end. I know GRRM doesn't give language warnings, but since this is rated T and there are 2 seconds worth of "M" language in it, I thought I'd let you know.

* * *

 

Having traveled throughout the known world as a knight, a criminal, a novice, a maester, a sorcerer's apprentice, a priest, a sellsword, and many other men with many other faces besides, and having convincingly functioned as a trusted adviser, a jealous lover, a close confidant, and once, even as the righteous sword of a little highborn girl, Jaqen had been witness to all manner of situations and circumstances. Therefore, during the course of his life as a Faceless assassin, the Lorathi had seen _many_ women faint. Some did it, it seemed, as a mere matter of convenience. Some, because they were ill or malnourished. Some ladies fainted because, like his Cat today, their clothing was far too restrictive to be practical and when they had want of breath, they found it was not available to them. He had seen even men faint at the sight of gore and blood and splintered bone amidst the screaming and groaning of the wounded of war and this was a common cause of fainting among those women exposed to such scenes as well. At funerals, at weddings, at clandestine meetings, during times of great pain or strife... Women fainted. But never his lovely girl. Not once in the years he had known her had she ever collapsed. Not under the weight of crushing grief. Not when ill (though she was an exceptionally healthy girl and rarely ill). Not when exhausted or excited or frightened. Not when snatched from her bed in the middle of the night and tossed from a window into the murky depths of a canal. Not when asked to do things that no child should ever be asked to do or made to see things that no child should ever have to see. Not when threatened by fiends who could crush her as easily as a walnut between their filed teeth and mailed fists. Not once when he had touched her, either with his hands or with his steel, whether in fondness or anger or with false aggression meant to instruct her.

And so this collapse had alarmed him.

Her master recalled that she had not even fainted when he had wiped his blood-smeared blade, its edge thick with bits of bone and tissue, across her chest so very long ago. In fact, as a mere child at Harrenhal witnessing the slaughter of battle within the melted and blackened walls where she was misused and treated as no better than a slave, she had not even appeared wan or pale, but instead looked... _powerful._ She had shown a sort of strength then which had shocked him, so remarkable was it for such a small girl. Arya, who had named herself _Weasel,_ had looked _alive_ in that moment and it almost seemed as if there was a light radiating from within her; a glow formed completely of her own joy of _creation._ She had been filled with the wonder of her budding realization of her power to spawn chaos and death; to compose calamity like a poem; like a song; like an intricately woven tapestry of ruin and retribution. The girl, beaten and threatened, grieving and angry, had rained down pain and blood and disaster upon those she deemed responsible for her woe with just a word. Or, more precisely, with two words: _Jaqen_ _H'ghar_ , her third name.

The Lorathi had shown her the evidence of her power in the thick smear of red with which he painted her white shift, branding her as the audacious and formidable creature that she was, telling her that she was the glorious architect of carnage in words a small child could understand. _A girl should be bloody too. This is her work._ She had looked down at the stain upon her breast and her master recalled that the sight of it had brought a tiny smile to her lips. He would have spent more time marveling at her reaction had he not had more of the Red god's work to do just then; more of _Arya Stark's_ work. The Ghost of High Heart was not wrong when she had wailed about a darkness within Lord Beric's young hostage. There was a profound darkness within the girl—Jaqen had seen it with his own eyes. Her darkness had almost seemed to reach out to his own, revealing itself to the only man ever to cross Arya's path who could fully appreciate it. He had _felt_ her darkness in the core of him and, at that moment in Harrenhal, he had seen it in her ghost of a smile.

And it was _beautiful._

* * *

After ridding his apprentice of the knot at her breast that had confounded her and then suddenly finding himself unexpectedly holding the burden of her weight as her knees betrayed her and she fell back against him, Jaqen lifted the girl in his arms and crossed the short distance to her bed where he placed her gently, her drooping head caught by her thin pillow where Mattine's abundant curls now rested. He then quickly stepped into the kitchen and rifled through a likely looking cupboard, finding the herbs he sought after a few moments. He crushed a small pinch of the dried, green leaves he had discovered under the girl's nose as he sat down next to her on the bed. Shortly thereafter, she curled her lips into a slight frown, wrinkling her nose as her eyes fluttered open. She seemed confused and her gaze flitted around the small chamber, settling only for the briefest of moments on any one of the room's various features as if trying to find something familiar to her but having no success.

"Lovely girl," the Lorathi cooed to his apprentice softly, drawing her eye to his false face, the face of a wealthy Braavosi merchant, "if a man had known you would go weak in the knees at his touch, he would have bid you to just leave on your _damnable contraption_."

The girl groaned, closing her eyes and then trying to sit up, but she looked paler than her master liked, so he pushed her shoulders gently back into the mattress when she attempted to rise.

"I couldn't breathe," she explained to him faintly, "and it was so hot in here. I think I forgot to eat…"

"A man knows," he reassured her. "And perhaps, a girl was also surprised to find her master had come in place of her brother, hmm?"

She nodded, for it was true. Her master's expression seemed unconcerned, but there was something in his eyes, just for a moment, that appeared almost... _troubled_. But that couldn't be—she hadn't eavesdropped on any conversations not meant for her ears or followed any Faceless Men surreptitiously around the docks. The Cat could think of no cause she had given her master for any worry. The look quickly dissolved and then his fingers were at her corset laces and he said, "A girl should try not to faint this time." He tugged at the thin ribbons, quickly pulling them loose and then the garment released her ribs, causing a sensation of sudden _lightness_ , an ability to just _breathe_ which made her feel almost euphoric. She sighed with the relief.

"Much, much better," she moaned. The breeze coming in through her open window was helping as well. "I feel almost myself now."

"That is very good, lovely girl."

His tone was tender and she felt her heart flutter again. She began to wonder if there might be something really wrong with her, some sort of illness that had not fully declared itself. Surely it could not be normal for a girl's heartbeat to make her feel as if a frantic sparrow were trapped in her chest. Inwardly cursing her weakness, she pushed up on her elbows as she addressed her master.

"Shall we spar now, Jaqen? I'm fine to stand."

"No, sweet child. There will be no sparring tonight," he told her as he guided her back down to her previous supine position.

"But… But _you_ said that I was to spar with two blades _every day_ until you said otherwise!" she protested, worried that he thought her too frail to stand and fight. She _hated_ when others considered her weak, particularly her mentor. _I feel fine now, anyway_ , she thought.

"Just so; until a man said otherwise. And a man has said."

She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled at her master, saying, "I'm not _infirm_ , Jaqen. I'm not some frail creature who has to take to her bed for a fortnight because she felt bloody _dizzy_."

"Hush, belligerent Cat. A man did not come here to spar with you. A man came here with the purpose of teaching his apprentice how to create flame with just her words."

The girl's scowl melted away in an instant and she popped up again, her excitement visible in her eyes which had taken on the appearance of molten metal. She bit Mattine's lip in anticipation. Her mentor resisted the urge to trace the line under the lip with his finger and pull it from between her teeth.

"But, a man will teach you _nothing_ if you get up before he says you may," her master scolded.

She rolled her eyes at him but lay down obediently. He smiled at her, but the gesture carried a hint of worry in it as he stroked her cheek with the back of his hand.

"A girl's color is too pale," he murmured.

"A girl's color was _always_ pale," she retorted. "I'm from the _North_."

"Yes, but _Mattine_ is of Essos, _not_ the North," he reminded her and felt a touch of satisfaction that she puckered her lip slightly and looked chastened at his reminder. She quickly ruled her face, however, and presented a defiant expression to her master, jutting Mattine's chin as she crossed her arms over her chest. He sighed, partly admiring her feisty demeanor, partly irritated by it. It was always a battle with his lovely girl. She was never content, never settled, never truly happy; at least, not for long. For all his lamenting of her contradictory nature, he found that he himself was torn between wanting to laugh delightedly at her foibles and wanting to spank her for them as if she were a naughty child. If he could stand to send her away from him, his life would become suddenly much less complicated, yet he could not bear the thought, for it would also make his life infinitely less meaningful.

_Arya Stark. Please do not take her from me._

"You _know_ I've never had any trouble with this sort of thing. Not once in my whole life have I ever fainted! It's just this stupid corset. I'm not accustomed to it," the Cat told her master. "You really don't have to worry about me. A little faint never hurt anyone, anyway."

"Yes, lovely girl, but a man has never before seen you quite this ghostly."

When he purred the word _ghostly_ , her mind was drawn back to her dream of Winterfell and her father sitting atop his tomb in the crypts. He hadn't appeared pale in the least. But, she supposed a _ghost_ and a _dream_ were not the same. Her face must have revealed to Jaqen some hint of her thoughts drifting off to consider an unrelated matter, because after a moment, her master placed his finger under her chin, directing her eyes toward his own, and asked her where she had gone.

"Winterfell," she whispered, without a trace of artifice.

This seemed to surprise him. She wondered what answer he had expected.

"A girl spends much of her time in Westeros these days," Jaqen observed dryly. "First, with her wolf and then with her friend _who is no knight_ , and now in Winterfell. Will a man need to find a new apprentice soon? Is a girl planning to leave her master and voyage westward?"

_Arya Stark. Please do not take her from me._

"Well, according to the plans I _inadvertently_ overheard the Kindly Man discussing with you, I'll be expected to undergo my final trial and take my vows in a short few weeks and then you'll have to get a new apprentice anyway," she remarked matter-of-factly.

The assassin did not seem eager to discuss this further with the acolyte at the moment and instead, rose from her bed, saying, "A girl has said she forgot to eat."

"There was... a little _excitement_ here earlier. I felt rather too tense to eat, I suppose. I should have, though. If I had, I surely wouldn't have fainted," she told him, hoping he believed her, because that was the truth.

 _So, it had nothing to do with finding yourself in your master's arms unexpectedly? It had nothing to do with him helping you out of your corset?_ that mischievous little voice whispered to her. She shook the question off, refusing to accept that such a thing was even possible. She had not eaten, it had been hot, she had exerted herself, she couldn't breathe, and there was _too much of consequence_ happening at the inn for her to think that merely the closeness of her mentor had been the trigger for her embarrassing collapse.

As she spoke, Jaqen walked through her door and into the kitchen once again, looking for anything he might feed the pallid girl. He found a half-loaf of bread that was not stale and some figs. He placed these on a clean platter he retrieved from a cupboard and brought them in to her along with a small cup of wine.

"Does a man need to be concerned not only with his apprentice's inability to undress with any degree of skill but also her failure to feed herself?" the Lorathi asked as he placed the cup on her table. The Cat scowled at him but said nothing, hoping that if she did not engage him, his teasing would end. She would not be so lucky.

"You may never get your chance to leave your master and sail to Westeros! A man fears that your _Kindly Man_ will be loath to allow a girl to take her vows and travel to far off lands, only to starve herself to death before completing her assigned task," he continued as he seated himself on the edge of her bed, taking his place next to her once again. Jaqen balanced the platter on his knee and chose a fig from it, holding it up to the girl's mouth. She glared at him but bit into the ripe fruit, chewing silently. When she had swallowed the bite of fig, her master pulled a bit of bread from the loaf he had found and offered it to her. She could hold her tongue no longer.

"Are you going to feed me like you're my nursemaid?"

"Since a girl cannot do this thing for herself, what choice does a man have?" her master asked her, pushing the bread against her lips. She grudgingly accepted the bite but even her chewing radiated resentment. After another few bites of fruit and bread, she felt much restored, though she would not admit it to Jaqen. He allowed her to sit up, resting her back against her pillow and headboard, so that she could sip the wine. She looked distrustfully at the cup when she saw the stuff was _red_.

"It is not sweet, lovely girl," the merchant chuckled.

Tentatively, the Cat sipped the red wine, finding it a little sour. Somehow, it felt good once it hit her belly and after a few minutes of sipping the wine and picking at the bread, she began to feel relaxed, less irritated with the whole situation, and happy to see her master.

"I've been trying to teach the Bear," she told him between swallows. "He's hopeless."

"A girl must be patient," her mentor advised her. "Not all who pick up a sword are gifted with your natural ability. Sometimes, a difficult pupil also has a lesson for the master; one regarding diligence."

His pointed look made her flush but she could not be sure if the color showed in her false face. She supposed she had, at times, been a _difficult pupil_. To avoid having to hold his gaze, the girl dipped her chin to sip at her wine once again, considering her next words.

"Am I a terrible burden to you, Jaqen?" the apprentice asked meekly, her eyes cast down upon her cup. She could feel her master looking at her.

"Since when does Arya Stark care who she burdens?" the Lorathi asked her with amusement.

"I'm not Arya Stark," she replied automatically. "I'm no one."

"But we both know that isn't true, don't we, lovely girl?" the Lorathi murmured softly. The Cat dropped her gaze down to her lap, shamed.

It was a problem that he had pondered much of late. The girl fixed her mind upon Westeros, upon her mother, upon her brother, upon her _wolf_ more and more often lately. It seemed to him that since he had leapt from the gangway of the Dragon's Daughter and onto the docks of Ragman's Harbor, the girl had _regressed_ in her training as it related to shedding her attachments and identity even as she progressed significantly in her other skills. She considered her old grudges and held them deeply, and though he ought not have, he satisfied them for her where he could, bringing her news of Ser Gregor's death, and carving out the hearts of men she had hated for so long, she could no longer recall their faces. This has been his challenge over the course of her training: how does a master make a willful girl give herself up? It was only more recently that his challenge had changed. Now, he wondered, how does a master give up a willful girl?

Arya's stubborn hold upon her identity had troubled him greatly, especially since his return to Braavos a few weeks back. He had worried endlessly that she might incite the anger of the principal elder for her inability to convincingly be _no one._ After witnessing what she could _do,_ he was also becoming increasingly concerned that her _special abilities_ (he still could not reconcile what she could do with the term _warging_ because it did not seem to quite fit) would make her a target of one sinister plot or another. He kept expecting some terrible judgment to be made upon her or a dreadful consequence to befall her, but none came. That is, not until she was bound and gagged and thrown into the canal to drown. But then, even this he could not be sure was as a result of her inability to embrace the creed of the order faithfully. With what had happened, how she had escaped, and the strange fact that someone had bothered to attempt to implicate _him_ in the plot, it felt more like a _test_ than a murder attempt.

And, of course, there was the fact that if the _Faceless Men_ had determined that a person should die, then that person _would_ die, yet his lovely girl still lived.

Jaqen had not yet puzzled out the underlying reason for the strange attack on his apprentice. The more he considered the possibly of a test, the more plausible it seemed, but then again, tests were straightforward things in the House of Black and White. A man might not know when he was _being_ tested, but he certainly learned fairly quickly whether or not he had succeeded at what was expected of him once the test had ended. Yet, there had been no word, no congratulations, no sad disappointment expressed to the girl. Indeed, the incident had not been addressed at all, except for between himself and his former master. Jaqen had been thinking much on this matter since he sent his apprentice away to play the part of Mattine. Why had the girl been allowed to flout the advice and commands of her _Kindly Man_ repeatedly, and with such impunity? The Lorathi was beginning to believe that the only way he would discover the truth of this matter was if the principal elder chose to divulge it to him.

The silence stretched out uncomfortably between them and finally, the Cat felt compelled to fill it.

"Olive has been rather curious about our... _relationship_ ," she told him and then took another sip of her wine.

" _Olive?_ " the man queried, cocking his head.

"She's _plump and delicious,"_ the girl supplied with a smattering of bitterness as a bit of the resentment she had held but then dismissed against the inn's server seemed to return all at once.

"You have lost a man, lovely girl."

"The bouncing tavern wench you're so fond of flirting with every chance you get," she clarified, her tone sounding perhaps a touch more vexed than she had a right to be. "Anyway, she always asks about you, or rather, she asks about Mattine's _handsome man,_ and I realized that we'd never discussed the... specifics of… of our affair, and I didn't want to say something that might be contradicted later, you know... when you _inevitably_ flirt with her again."

The merchant's grin was broad and genuine, his eyes crinkling with delight, and he asked, "Is Mattine the jealous sort? Does she doubt her lover's devotion to her and worry that a _bouncing tavern wench_ may steal him away?"

She ignored his jesting and nearly whined, "I don't even know what to _call_ you!"

His smile suddenly seemed more wistful than teasing when he said, "A man is happy to let you name him."

"Marco, then," the girl offered after a moment's consideration, choosing a name common to the higher classes in Braavos, the equivalent of Willem or Edric in her native land.

"Marco. Just so. A man is now Marco. What other details does a girl require a man to know so that he will not contradict her while he flirts with this plump and delicious _Olive_?"

Her glare was utterly predictable but what she said next was not.

"I'd like to know if you think there is any chance you'll marry me."

Her words caught her master off his guard and his teasing smirk froze on his face. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but no words came. His eyes narrowed slightly and locked onto hers, false eyes looking into false eyes, trying to find some truth, some understanding in them but there was none to be had. When he said nothing and merely looked intently at her, the girl tilted her head slightly and regarded him, wondering what his hesitation was.

"It doesn't matter to _me_ ," she explained, looking at him uncertainly, studying his odd expression, "but it seems like something Olive would ask and I'd hate to have told her _yes,_ there was a plan to marry or something similar and then have _you_ undermine my story by whispering something else entirely in her ear. I need to be believed while I'm under this roof. Being credible will make my task much easier."

The merchant's handsome face seemed to relax a bit as Mattine spoke and his eyes looked more unconcerned than they had previously. He had been leaning slightly toward her before she began to speak but now leaned away, sitting up a bit straighter on her bed. Her master still had not answered her question, however.

"We should just agree on our story is all I mean," the girl prompted.

"What does a jealous cook think _our story_ should be?"

"Hmm..." the girl stalled, taking another sip of her wine and letting her eyes drift upward and to the right as she considered his question. "Braavos is definitely a society with much more tolerance than Westeros when it comes to... affairs of the heart, so it's entirely possible a rich merchant class man might be smitten with a cook and choose to marry her. However, if we claim to have such an agreement, it might make it difficult for me to take advantage of the opportunity which presented itself today."

He was both confused and intrigued. His look and a small hand gesture indicated that she should explain herself to him, and so she continued, reminding him that she had already mentioned that there was a bit of excitement at the inn that day. The Cat recounted the incident between Syrio, her mark, and the guard in detail, knowing how her master relished full accounts (almost as much as the Kindly Man) and then told him of the wealthy man's offer to take Mattine into his household, no doubt to replace his relationship with Hellind by embarking upon one with her younger sister and look-alike. _Of course,_ the offer had been couched as a charitable act of a selfless man, as the wealthy man was renown for his goodness around Braavos. The apprentice had been considering the offer and after the initial distaste wore off, she began to see what a fortuitous occurrence the wealthy man's proposition was.

The apprentice was still talking about her realization that this could be the best thing possible for accomplishing the work of the Many-Faced god when she saw the expression on the merchant's face and stopped abruptly. She had not yet related the part where she learned that Syrio had indeed intended to kill the wealthy man or why.

"What is it?" she asked, alarmed. Marco looked... _aghast._

" _Why is a man only hearing of this now?_ " he demanded, a scowl marring his handsome Braavosi features.

"Because... I was... _unconscious_ earlier?" she said in a sarcastically uncertain tone. Her flippancy did nothing to assuage her master's irritation with her.

"Does a girl think her master has sent her away from the temple so that she might leave one dangerous situation only to purposefully thrust herself into another?"

"Well... I _am_ training to be an _elite assassin_ , so... Yes?"

His look was acerbic, his tone even more so when he replied, "Did your master not tell you that this dead man is _dangerous_? Did a man not also say that part of your task was to return to him _unharmed_? A wealthy man takes an armed guard with him wherever he goes. _How many of them does a girl suppose a wealthy man pays to guard his home and his family?_ But a girl believes that moving into this home, this _well-guarded_ home, is an intelligent idea? A grand opportunity? And when this wealthy man decides to pursue the object of his lust, what does a girl plan to do then, under this well-guarded roof?"

The Cat was surprised by the vehemence of Jaqen's objections. She had thought he would see, as she did, how perfectly set up she would be to accomplish her goal if she accepted the wealthy man's offer of employment. She understood, of course, that she would need to keep her wits about her and stay on her toes, but then, when was that _not_ the case for an acolyte of the House of Black and White? She had recently been reminded that even in the dark of night when sleeping in one's own bed, one _still_ had to be alert and prepared! She certainly felt qualified to stave off the advances of a lusty Braavosi with a paunchy belly and she felt no threat from the pathetic sellsword he kept at his side, a man whose best days were past him and whose skill with a blade (especially the small, throwing variety) surely in no way matched her own. Being in the household of Hellind's lover would give her access and opportunity that she would not get otherwise. _Surely_ , her master could see that.

The apprentice sat her cup of wine on Mattine's little table, resting it next to the flickering candle she hoped her master would still teach her to light with flame created of nothingness. She sat up straighter and placed her hand on her master's shoulder in an almost comforting gesture. She knew that after Jaqen had invested years of his life in training her, instructing her, and safeguarding her (sometimes from herself), that he was bound to feel a bit _protective_ , but she was mere weeks away from taking her vows and it was inevitable that soon, she would be alone somewhere, fending for herself, delivering the gift of death and carrying out the wishes of the Many-Faced god on her own. He needed to make his peace with the fact that he could not always be there for her. And though it made her a little wistful to think on it herself, she realized (and wanted _him_ to realize) that she didn't _need_ for him to always be there for her. Because of all he had done for her, because of his training and his patience and his _diligence,_ she was ready. She did not fear to go into the household of the man marked for death. She knew that she possessed the wit and skill she needed to perform her duty and then return to the temple unharmed, just as she had been directed by her master.

"Jaqen," the girl said in Mattine's soft voice, "I understand your concern and I _appreciate_ it, probably more than you know. But I am going to do this thing, and I would like for you to not be worried while I do it, because this is what you have trained me for. I am not afraid."

Setting the platter he had been balancing on his knee next to the girl's cup of wine on her little table, the Lorathi then placed his hands on his knees, leaning forward over his thighs in thought. He sat quietly for a long while, and all the time, the Cat rested her palm against his shoulder, feeling the heat of his skin through the dark blue linen of his tunic. Finally, her master pushed himself up and looked at his lovely girl, wearing the face of a grieving sibling, and smiled sadly before he spoke.

"So, the wedding is off?"

The girl bowed her head in gratitude for her mentor's respect of her judgment and then begged him to show her the flame trick.

"A man will teach you this trick," he agreed, "and, if you allow him the use of one of your fine, sharp blades, he will show you what he can do with blood as well."

* * *

There was a buzzing that seemed to emanate from somewhere beneath the Cat's breast and it spread throughout her body, causing a slight vibration she could feel all the way to the tips of her fingers and toes. It was an excitement at having mastered new skills. _And what skills they were_ , she thought giddily. Her Cat-appropriate mood shone forth from Mattine's face and tone and step that morning in the kitchen such that Olive remarked upon it as soon as she pushed through the door to see what the lovely Myrish girl was making for breakfast.

"I _knew_ it!" Olive declared, her voice making her words an almost joking accusation. "He _came_ last night, didn't he?"

Mattine smiled but said nothing.

"There's no use denying it, I can see that you look tired and yet giddy at the same time. That usually means one thing."

"It means I was up late, but I'm in a good mood anyway," the cook laughed. "Everything doesn't have to be about… _that_ , Olive."

"Oh, yes it does!" the wench declared. "So, did he bring you anything? Something _useful_ , maybe?"

The cook couldn't help but burst out laughing at the serving girl's suggestive tone when she said the word _useful._

"Yes," she admitted, "but not in the way _you_ mean."

"More's the pity," the tavern girl lamented with false sorrow.

Before Olive could press the cook for more details, the Cat decided to distract her with the one thing she knew could unquestionably capture the wench's attention.

"Olive, I think I may know of the perfect man for you."

"Don't tell me you're giving up your handsome man already!"

"No, this one is more of an age with you, though he's handsome enough."

The wench's interest was definitely piqued, and so the Cat set about matchmaking for her brother and her… _friend?_ It struck the acolyte as odd that it did not feel wrong to think of the wench this way. And yet, even before her training among the order of Faceless Men had instructed her to be _no one_ , she had only ever had a very few close friends. Was this truly how friends were made?

Nightfall arrived quickly at the inn, or so it seemed, so busy were they all with their duties. Syrio looked nearly to be asleep on his feet when she and Olive shuffled him off toward his bed and even the bubbly tavern wench's bouncing curls seemed deflated. The cook knew she would be a dueling _Bravo_ once again after they had all said their good nights. Her master had told her he could not come back this night and would send her brother to her in his stead. Her hands itched for their blades and so it was with pleasant anticipation that she awaited the arrival of her brother _Bravo_ but she found she was still disappointed that she would not see Jaqen (and she refused to dwell on why that was. She reminded herself that she only ever allowed herself to feel _hate._ Hate and _anger._ These other strange feelings that had been attempting to bubble up ever since Jaqen's return to the temple were foreign to her and she did not understand them, which confused her. The Cat _hated_ to feel confused.)

Tying Mattine's hair in the silken scarf with the scattered starbursts, the Cat turned to extinguish her candle so that she might practice at relighting it. Before she had succeeded in blowing it out, though, she caught the hulking form of her bear-like brother in her peripheral vision, stalking through the kitchen just behind her open door, and whirled to face him.

"You're very quiet for one so large," she told him admiringly. "I've never noticed that before."

"I've been working on it," he admitted. "I had thought to creep up on you. For practice."

She snorted, and in a flash, she had palmed her wrist blade and had it at his throat.

"Wouldn't have been advisable," the Cat informed him.

"So I see."

Just as quickly as she had pulled the blade out, it was gone, tucked once again safely beneath her sleeve.

Shortly after the Cat had threatened the Bear with her small blade, she was beating him mercilessly with her larger ones. After a time, however, she heard Jaqen in her head, reminding her to be patient. _And_ diligent. And so she stopped harassing the boy with her flurry of sharp edges and instead, stood back and gave him instruction. He seemed to breathe a sigh of relief and tried to follow her directions. When this, too, produced little in the way of measurable improvement, she thought about it some more and then walked up to him, looking as if she might punch him in his gut. He actually flinched slightly as she pressed her balled up fist into his belly, pushing against him with enough force that she was satisfied he could feel it deep inside of himself.

"Listen to your gut," the girl said, thinking back on the things her master had told her once. "You need to _feel_ it here. Your gut will give you direction, but you must listen to it."

The large boy nodded, and he truly seemed to understand what she was saying, though she was not sure that would translate into his being able to _use_ the advice in any practical way. She reasoned that the only way to know was to try. She raised her two blades again and bid her brother to do the same.

"Let's dance," she said, nodding to him.

* * *

Though he was far from proficient, the Cat had to admit that her brother had shown some small improvement that night. He at least did not look like a tottering buffoon with his two swords anymore and actually had once been able to turn his crashing sword at the last second so that the glancing blow she received the her thigh was with the flat of his blade rather than the sharp edge. She ought not to have been in a position to receive the blow except that she had allowed herself to be distracted for a moment by a figure in an alleyway near the tavern across the plaza, on the opposite side of the Moon Pool. The man (the size of the figure suggested a man, anyway, but she had learned among the assassins of the order that assumptions were merely _assumptions_ and not proof) was too far away for her to see any features but the face seemed turned toward them and moved to follow their dance around the plaza. _Someone was watching them. Was he friend or foe?_

This time, when they took their rest near the pool, the Cat sat facing the the water (and the figure in the alleyway) and allowed her brother the spot leaning against the low wall of the fountain. Despite their distance from both the tavern and the seemingly watchful eye of the alley's inhabitant, she kept her expression light, her face carefree. Just because she did not see his features in the dim alley did not mean he could not see hers under the moonlight bouncing off the waters of the pool.

"Do you remember when I said I knew a girl who was perfect for you?" the girl asked her brother.

"Are we at this again? Cat, if you want me, you just have to say so. I guess I owe you, after all the time you've spent teaching me how to have my clothes sliced to ribbons and all the effort you've spent making sure I have adequate bruising."

" _Idiot_ ," she muttered and the boy laughed.

"Who is this paragon of womanly virtue?"

It was the girl's turn to laugh and then she said, "If there was _one way_ I would _not_ describe Olive, that would be it."

"Oh? Well, how _would_ you describe this _Olive_?" the Bear asked, suddenly interested. His sister cocked her head and looked at him as if she was carefully considering her answer and then her mouth curled into a mischievous grin as she found the perfect words.

" _Plump and delicious."_

The lithe _Bravo_ threw her head back and laughed heartily at her brother's shocked expression. As he thought about her words, though, the boy's face became less-shocked and more delighted. His sister told him that he should find some fine clothes in the vaults below the temple and come to the inn for the midday meal on the morrow (she also suggested he _not_ tell Umma what he was about, or else she might get miffed at his skipping her cooking for the food at an inn.) She would arrange the rest. The girl appraised him seriously for a moment and then told him that he could wear a false face if he chose, but she thought he ought to keep his own countenance.

"You're handsome enough for her," the Cat declared.

"Do you think so?"

"Well, _passably_ handsome," she qualified with a teasing smirk. "If you bring her a gift, she's yours for sure."

She wasn't sure why she was bothering with this, it was really such nonsense. It was just that Olive seemed to love the idea of being in love, and the Bear seemed a suitable enough object for her affection, and if the Cat couldn't make him proficient with two blades, she could at least give him a lighthearted distraction before his final trial. After he said his vows, who knew where he might end up going? One of the other free cities? One of the cities of Slaver's Bay? Asshai? Possibly even across the Narrow Sea to take part in the hellish war that drug on in Westeros. After their duel in the training room not so long ago, the Bear had given his sister his respect, and so she wanted to give him what little joy she could. Olive was nothing if not joyful. _At least, she seemed so, on the surface..._

As the two of them stared past each other and considered the possibilities of the Bear's association with Olive (the girl wondered if Mattine would be forced to listen to stories of their sweaty exploits between Olive's sheets while the cook tried to bake the day's bread and her brother wondered if the tavern girl might consent to hold his hand as they walked along the docks), a trio of swaggering _Bravos_ approached the Moon Pool, spoiling for a fight, as ever. Their disposition was evident in their ambling strut, hands resting lightly on sword hilts.

" _Bear_ ," the girl hissed at her brother quietly. "If those puffed up fools try to engage us in a fight, beg off. But if they won't be dissuaded, don't try to duel them with both swords."

"I know you think I'm an idiot, sister," the boy hissed back, "but I'm an idiot who doesn't plan to get poked full of holes by a _Bravo_."

She nodded to him, and the pair did their best to give the appearance of being at ease, not in the least interested in dueling. The Cat watched the movements of the _Bravos_ warily, and it seemed to her that the dark figure in the alley did so as well. Since the swaggering peacocks were much closer to her and her brother than their mysterious observer was, she spent most of her attention on them, figuring that if the man in the alley became a threat, it would be obvious to her in plenty of time to react.

About that, the girl was wrong.

As the trio of men approached, the Cat noted wryly that they were dressed even more ridiculously than the disguised acolytes. She realized that she recognized one of the _Bravos,_ a fair-haired man with a long scar that ran across his jaw to his chin, a wound that had been acquired sometime after she had last crossed his path. He was older, though she doubted he was wiser. _Orbelo_. Frankly, with his questionable blade skills and his brazen attitude, she was surprised that he was still alive. He must have been blessed with incredible luck.

_Maybe today his luck would run out._

The other two, she did not recognize. They appeared younger than Orbelo but older than she and her brother. They had a more typical Braavosi appearance, dark hair, dark eyes, and olive skin. They looked like they could be the older brothers of little Syrio.

The Cat's muscles tensed as the trio sauntered toward the seated acolytes. Her hand did not move toward either sword but she noted the precise location of both hilts, resting on the cobblestones to either side of where she was sitting. She was not afraid to duel these ridiculous pretenders but after sparring for so long, she was afraid her brother might be weakened or fatigued and she wasn't sure how well his usual lumbering, crashing style of swordplay would match up with the _Bravos_ ' favored water dancer's style. She was certain that she and her brother could prevail, but she was less-certain that she could get the Bear home to the temple uninjured and felt it wiser to not fight at all, if possible.

"My friends and I believe you are no real _Bravos_ ," Orbelo said by way of greeting the Cat and the Bear.

"Your friends and you are wrong," the Cat told him simply, her knee bent casually and her hand resting upon it and she lounged on the ground. She did not think she could rise without it being perceived as a challenge and so she kept her relaxed position.

"Are you calling us liars, little whore?" Orbelo asked, his voice sounding dangerous. It was obvious that he was trying to provoke her and the Bear.

 _Rule your face,_ she told herself harshly. Her hands twitched but she did not reach for her swords.

The Cat shrugged, ignoring the insult, repeating, "I'm saying you and your friends are wrong. Now, run along. My friend and I have no wish to duel. We've already had our fill tonight."

The three arrogant swordsmen laughed as if they had never heard anything so funny. The girl flicked her eyes briefly to the alley to see that the shadowy man had moved a few steps closer to the street but did not seem inclined to approach them further. He was still much too far away for her to need to figure him into her strategy.

"What about you, you great mound of flesh?" Orbelo addressed her brother. "Have you had your fill of dueling?"

"I always let my friend here do the talking for me," the large boy replied, leaning his head back against the lip of the fountain wall as if too tired to engage in further banter.

The laughter of the antagonistic _Bravos_ was even more uproarious at the Bear's words. After Orbelo caught his breath from his guffawing, he asked the Bear how he could let a _little girl_ do his talking for him. The blonde man's tone dripped with derision and he was wrapping and unwrapping his fingers around his sword hilt, obviously aching to draw his steel.

"That's no little girl," the Bear assured them, his eyes meeting his sister's. Her lips curved up into her malicious little smile as she returned his look and then nodded almost imperceptibly to him before he continued, "That's a demon masquerading as a little girl."

As the words left her brother's mouth, the Cat knew that they would almost certainly be taken as a challenge, but she tried her one last strategy in hopes they could avoid bloodshed.

"This _little girl_ learned her swordplay at the feet of Syrio Forel, the First Sword of Braavos," she revealed, hoping that one or more of these men might also have been pupils or admirers of Syrio and that this would buy tired acolytes a pardon for the sin of being present when the trio arrived at the Moon Pool. Though her _Bravo_ clothing was gaudy and silly, she had no wish to stain it with the blood of these three idiots and risk the next outfit her master sent her being even worse.

" _Syrio Forel was a fucking camel cunt,_ " hissed one of the dark _Bravos_ who had been quiet up until that point, and after he said it, he spat. The thick glob of spittle landed on the toe of the Cat's boot. _Though the clothes were awful, she rather liked the boots._

 _This one will die first_ , she vowed and then whispered, "Valar morghulis."

The Bear leapt to his feet with his fine longsword in hand and the Cat followed him, grabbing both of her blades as she did. Throwing the steel out wide in an open-armed gesture of welcome, her face changed, abandoning her passive expression and arranging itself into a frightening smile. She spoke in a low, growling voice, inviting the _Bravos_ to dance with her.

* * *

 _ **Big Parade—**_ The Lumineers (mostly because of the "Lovely Girl" lines. Also, because... _Lumineers_ )

 _ **All the Above—**_ Maino ft. T. Pain ("How the hell could you stop me? Why in the world would you try?")

 _ **The Underdog—**_ Spoon ("you have no fear of the underdog, that's why you will not survive" Ha ha! Silly _Bravos_...)


	33. Chapter 33

The Bear lay bleeding near the Moon Pool as the Cat uttered a stream of curses under her breath, yanking the scarf from her hair so that she could use it to bind her brother's wound up tightly. Looking at the boy's injury, she thought it would heal fine; Orbelo's blade seemed to have only pierced the meat of the Bear's upper arm (thankfully _not_ his sword arm), but he was bleeding quite freely from the puncture and she began to worry about the sheer quantity of the blood running down his arm, soaking his colorfully striped sleeve and pooling on the stones where his sword now lay. The Cat grunted, yanking the scarf tighter around his arm. Her brother was beginning to look quite pale and she did not wish for him to faint from the blood loss, mostly because he was _too damn big_ for her to carry.

"Well, the dead peacock was right about one thing," the girl told the Bear as she pulled the scarf tighter over his injured flesh, nodding her head slightly toward the nearby crumpled form of the now notably less-audacious Orbelo. "We _aren't_ real _Bravos_."

Her brother snorted and then moaned, admonishing her then for making him laugh; it hurt too much, he said.

"Don't be such a weak little maiden," the Cat scoffed, her tone gruff. "It's just a small flesh wound. You'll be fine."

"It's not the arm. I think I broke a few ribs when I fell," the large boy explained, wincing. "Hurts to laugh is all."

She had seen him land awkwardly, his chest crashing against the stone edge of the low wall around the pool as he fell to the ground. Her brother's heels had gotten caught against the lifeless arm of the first of the dark _Bravos_ the Cat had dispatched a few moments before her brother's feet met the dead man's still limb. The unfortunate contact occurred as the large Lyseni boy reeled away from one of Orbelo's cuts aimed at his neck. In employing the great, clumsy, whirling motion, the Bear had saved his head but lost his balance. As he fell against the lip of the raised pool, he had felt at least two ribs snap and had been fairly robbed of his breath by the exquisite shock of the feeling. His brain had told him to thrust his longsword up and skewer Orbelo through his scarlet and emerald clad belly but the immediate paralytic power of his pain had not allowed his arm to obey his thoughts. Orbelo had raised his skinny little skewer, aiming it at the Bear's heart and just at the moment that the large acolyte felt with certainty was his last ( _his thought, oddly enough, was that he would never meet the buxom tavern girl with which the Cat had been trying to match him)_ , a thick stream of blood fell over Orbelo's lower lip like a crimson waterfall and the blonde _Bravo_ , his eyes wide in fantastic surprise, fell forward, landing next to the Bear on the cobblestones adjacent to the pool. The large Lyseni apprentice could not understand what had just happened as he stared at the still body of the dead _Bravo_ , but then he looked across the plaza and saw his sister, wearing her false face, striding across the cobblestones toward him with speed. She called out to him, her voice heavy with worry (expressed, charmingly enough, as a string of curses she could only have learned skulking about the docks of Ragman's, spying on rough sailors), asking if he was alright. And then he knew.

_She never goes anywhere without her throwing blades._

The puncture through his upper left arm burned like dragonfire, but he would have been alright if not for his own clumsiness. It was the cracks in his ribs that really bothered him. He had been holding his own with Orbelo, despite the blonde man's use of the slithering, quick-strike style of swordplay that his sister favored, the so-called _water dancer's_ technique. The Bear had been a little worried for his sister, seeing as how the two younger _Bravos_ were attacking her at the same time, and he allowed himself to look quickly over at her so that he might be satisfied that she was fine (and, of course, she was). The distraction was just enough for him to be late in blocking a thrust from the fair-haired _Bravo_ and so he was unable to knock the blade completely away, suffering the wound to his non-dominant arm. Still, it had not slowed him noticeably. In fact, until he had reeled gracelessly away from that last desperate blow of Orbelo's and tripped over the corpse of another _Bravo_ , he had been pressing his opponent, driving him back.

After the girl who looked like Mattine had tended her brother's wound, she moved to the corpse of the man who had instigated this whole thing and roughly rotated his head, turning his face away from her. At first, her brother thought she just couldn't stand to look upon the blonde man's countenance, but then he saw her pluck her dagger from the back of the _Bravo's_ neck. With a look of irritation at her blood-spattered silken blouse, she shook her head and sighed, wiping the small blade clean upon her own breast before she seated the steel in the usual spot, in the leather sheath strapped to her wrist.

"Thank you, sister," the Bear said sincerely. She gave him a roll of her eyes and then asked him if he could walk. He said that he could but let out a great cry when she pulled him to his feet, his arm going protectively to his own ribs, pressing against the injury like a make-shift splint.

"I'll walk you home," she told him.

"There's no need," the Lyseni assured her. "I can manage the distance, no doubt."

The Cat shook her head at him, telling him he was a great fool if he thought that she would allow him walk alone, so injured. She reminded him that any other idiotic _Bravo_ might be roaming about in the night, ready to challenge him in his weakened state. He accepted her wisdom and nodded gratefully to her, waiting for her to put her two swords in her belt. She did, and then put his swords in _his_ belt for him, saving him the task of bending to retrieve them, and he had a sudden, unbidden thought of a wife girding her husband for battle in one of those strange _Westerosi_ tales of chivalry that his brother Rat used to tell him when they were just green boys. He shook it away, not bothering to wonder at the image.

There was a small part of the Bear that said he should be embarrassed that his sister was walking him home, playing guard to him, yet he did not feel embarrassed in the least. The lessons of _we are all but instruments of the Many-Faced god_ and _skill is skill_ had been long taught to him in the House of Black and White, but the truth of those words had never been more apparent than they were the day the Cat had bloodied his nose and disarmed him without seeming to break a sweat. Skill _was_ skill, he had learned in the training room that day in a convincing way, and it mattered not where it was found. He was glad of her skill and would not deny that it was much greater than his own, knowing that it had saved his life this night. He would never disdain it, or her, ever again. Others would only do so in his presence to their great regret, he vowed, but he did so knowing that this was like to cause a rift with his brother Rat.

"Eyes sharp for other swaggering fools," the Cat warned her brother as they began to walk toward the Isle of the Gods . She pulled his arm around her neck, draping it over her shoulder to offer what support she could. "And try not to faint, you great brute, because you'll crush me."

He snickered and then groaned and then growled at her for making him laugh again but she did not seem to feel any mirth. The Bear thought she was acting strangely, considering that they had just beaten three _Bravos_ rather decisively and the only casualties were a minor flesh wound ( _his_ ) and some cracked ribs ( _also his_ ) that he chalked more up to his lack of grace than anything else. The Cat thrived on strife and blood and steel; this was well-known among the assassins and apprentices of the order, and there had been plenty of all three tonight. Why, then, was she not acting more… _joyful?_

"Sister, were you injured?" the large boy asked with panting breaths, his chest stabbing him with pain for each inhalation.

"No," the girl replied shortly.

She looked warily about them, her eyes scanning their path, her ears pricked for sounds of anyone following them. She seemed too tense for this to be about wandering _Bravos_ but did not seem inclined to share her worry with him, so he stayed quiet. What his sister was not telling him was that the shadowy man, the one who had watched their sparring and then stayed to watch them duel with the _Bravos_ in the plaza around the Moon Pool so intently, had vanished from the dim alley when she knelt to help her brother with his wound. She couldn't be sure he wasn't stalking them now, intending them some harm, and so she remained vigilant. She knew he wasn't just a casual bystander or interested observer by the way he had coolly watched the entire duel without seeming to react in any way.

* * *

_The false Bravo, wearing both Mattine's face and the laughable clothes her master had chosen for her, had whispered, "Valar morghulis" and then risen from the ground at the dark Bravo's vile words about Syrio. The insult of the spittle was an annoyance, but to the Cat, voicing anything besides the utmost respect for her first, and greatest, dancing master was simply unforgivable. She threw her arms out wide in a grand gesture of invitation, the sharp points of her Bravos blade and bastard sword facing east and west, respectively, as she spoke in her menacing tone to the three dead men._

_"A young maid is so very fond of dancing," she told them, the words sounding so much more sinister as she said them into the moonlit night around the Moon Pool than they had when she had used them sarcastically with her brothers and master recently. Her lips curled into their terrifying smile, made even more disconcerting by Mattine's wide, innocent doe eyes sitting above it. "Who will oblige me?"_

_The Cat pulled her body into her modified water dancer's stance, the one her master had critiqued and corrected slightly the last time they had sparred. Orbelo had immediately leapt at her, thinking her a quick conquest by virtue of her small stature and sex, but she turned his blow aside easily, barely moving more than her one arm, her action crisp and quick. The two dark Bravos had jumped into the fray as the Bear engaged Orbelo, drawing the blonde swordsman off of the Cat. She had been pleased at that. She had made a vow, after all, and the man who had dared to insult Syrio would die first._

It might seem that a girl who is faced with two opponents at once must be at a great disadvantage. This assumption, of course, fails to take into account the quickness of the girl, her own skill with her blades, and also the fact that two opponents attacking a common foe must be mindful not only of their shared target but also of each other as well, lest they cause accidental injury to one another or get their feet caught up together, resulting in tripping or stumbling. Whenever the Cat had pictured herself battling multiple foes at once, she often forgot to take this truth into account as well, and so she found that battling the two Braavosi men was less difficult than she had imagined it would be. Still, it did require great effort and concentration.

_She tried not to let the mysterious figure watching her (for it did truly seem to her that she was the object of interest to this man as the fight progressed. His head remained turned in her direction, regardless of where the other participants in this duel found themselves) distract her from her more immediate tasks, which were to keep all of her limbs attached to her body, to avoid any sharp steel which might mar the integrity of her skin, and insure her life's blood continued coursing through her veins rather than allowing it to be drained away, staining the stones beneath her feet. Still, she couldn't help but note dark figure inching closer to the edge of the alley, nearly in the street now, but not advancing far enough into the moonlight for his face to be revealed._

_The swords of the dark-haired Bravos seemed to slice at her in a conveniently alternating fashion, allowing her to parry each of their blows in rapid succession, her typical speed preventing her from having to use her swords simultaneously to perform different feats, though she began to feel as if this were entirely possible. Something seemed to be happening to her. He skin was tingling from the top of her scalp to the soles of her feet and she felt simply… aware. There was an alertness such as she had never felt and a calm had descended upon her mind that was quite unlike anything she had ever experienced before. A sort of power radiated from her very center and pulsed throughout her body and it even seemed to stretch along the sharp edges of her steel, making her blades feel as if they were one with her, somehow an extension of the very bone and sinew of her arms. As improbable as it was, she found that in this moment of dizzying movement and danger, she had at last discovered the stillness about which the Kindly Man had so long been trying to teach her._

_For all the months she had been pondering the elder's words, practicing her immobile stance in the dining hall, learning to measure and restrict even her breaths so that they were undetectable, moving like a shadow through the corridors of the temple of the Faceless Men, she had misunderstood what it was the Kindly Man had meant. Even when she had commanded herself to stillness in times of stress and strife, she was only able to rein in her natural state of frantic energy enough to focus on the problem before her. It had been enough, and so she had mistook herself for a master of stillness, but no matter how still she appeared on the outside, inside, she was always in a state of spinning chaos. Her mind was perpetually unsettled, constantly moving, stalking and circling her ideas and troubles like a wolf pursuing its prey, her gut frequently writhing like a nest of vipers, her heart fluttering beneath her breast like the wings of a dragonfly or frenzied bird._

_But not now. Her bones felt as though they vibrated with her awareness of everything happening around her but inside, in her mind and in her heart, she was perfectly still. It was the exact opposite of what she had been doing all along with her insides roiling and mind tumbling while her exterior took on the frozen, motionless appearance of Lyanna's statue sitting atop her sepulcher. The Kindly Man had promised her that when she finally found a moment of stillness, she would learn that it was neither life nor death but that it was, instead, great strength and acute awareness. She felt the truth of his words now deep inside of her; so deep, that they were now a part of her._

* * *

"Cat," the Bear began quietly, interrupting his sister's memories of their duel and pulling her roving eye from its constant scanning of the streets and alleyways to his own face, "I've never seen you do the things you did tonight. Is that what the Lorathi has been teaching you?"

"Maybe if you'd been paying attention to the things _Orbelo_ was doing instead of the things _I_ was doing, you wouldn't be bleeding all over my scarf right now," his sister answered him sourly, returning her gaze to their path, her eyes sweeping over the surrounding shadows.

"I'll bring you one that suits you better tomorrow," he promised, smiling at her. "Those weren't your colors, anyway."

 _Jade and turquoise, accented by gold and red? She was quite sure those weren't_ anyone's _colors._

"Do you really think we'll be dueling tomorrow, you oaf?" she hissed at him, yanking his slipping arm firmly around her neck and shoulder to give him more support. His strength seemed to be flagging a little. The Cat wasn't truly upset with her brother. She was angrier with herself for not keeping him from harm and she was a little concerned that she had lost her sparring partner for the foreseeable future.

The boy winced as she readjusted his arm and then he said, "No, I suppose I'm off dueling for a bit, but I wasn't planning to let a few cracked ribs and a little cut keep me away from the inn for the midday meal. I want to meet this tavern girl of yours."

She looked at him in disbelief. He would have been bleeding to death in the plaza at that very moment but for the good fortune of the last of her opponents obliging her and dying just in time for her to turn and see Orbelo about to run her brother through. She had only just stopped the braying fool in time and it had been a close thing. If everything had happened two seconds later, the Bear would be among the corpses now resting upon the cobblestones around the Moon Pool. The large boy had nearly forfeited his life, and yet here he was, thinking only of meeting Olive with all the romantic silliness of her sister Sansa pining for a prince she barely knew.

 _I wonder if his chest feels like a sparrow is trapped inside of it_ , she wondered, but she dared not ask him. She didn't like the thought of answering the inevitable questions to which such a query would likely lead.

The Cat said nothing, but set about casting her eyes back and forth across their path once again, looking for some threat that thankfully did not seem to exist. The Bear was quiet for a while but then brought up the subject he had initially tried to introduce only to be chastised by his sister for the inattention which resulted in his injury.

"Where did you learn how to fight like that?"

He was specifically referring to her nearly undefinable movements which had made her seem almost as if she were flying through the air between the two dueling _Bravos_ who commanded her attention. He had only ever seen his brother Rat make such moves, a sort of acrobatic tumbling and leaping the boy had been trained to perform when he made his home with a traveling mummer's troupe before coming to live with the Faceless Men. Though the movements seemed like something he had seen the narrow-faced Westerosi boy display on several occasions, his brother had never quite used them like the Cat did today.

* * *

_The girl looked more like an enraged, feral feline than a Bravo as she leapt from side to side, giving each of her opponents their due attention in turn, pressing first one man and then the other in a rapid sequence that her brother (and the Bravos themselves) found dizzying. At one point, it seemed as if the men had finally understood her rhythm and managed to seize upon the same plan at the same time, meaning to thrust their swords at her from different angles, all at once, one Bravo's sword nearly a mirror image of the other. Somehow, the girl had anticipated this and just as the sharp points of the blades pushed toward each side of her torso in an effort to stick her with their pointy ends, she gracefully launched herself up into the air, pulling her body into a spinning mass with blinding speed, rolling effortlessly through the night, over the blades of the men which then clashed with each other rather than skewering the girl's body as intended. She landed on her feet and whirled around, swords at the ready, greeted by both Bravos' widened, startled eyes. She took advantage of the astonishment of the men, the foul-mouthed Bravo seeming particularly stunned by what he had just seen. He attempted a clumsy thrust toward her heart but she spun around on her toes, truly resembling a maiden who was fond of dancing, and the narrow blade merely sliced the air where she had only just stood, missing her entirely._

_Her move had brought her to the side of the man and he turned to face her but it was too late. He was already dead, though he did not yet know it._

_The girl had thrust her large bastard sword through his chest, the tip emerging from his back, between his shoulder blades, and as she pushed it in further and brought herself closer to his ear, she whispered, "When you see Syrio Forel in the Nightlands, try to keep a civil tongue in your head. He's less forgiving than I am." And with that, she gave a great cranking twist of her sword hilt and watched the light fade from the man's eyes._

_The other dark Bravo had been standing behind his partner's body as he was impaled upon the Cat's sword and as the first man died, the second man gave the girl a look filled with both horror and hatred as he watched her push the corpse off of her blade with the sole of the very boot upon which the dead man had spat. The apprentice allowed the lifeless body to fall to the ground near the edge of the Moon Pool. It would be this corpse that would soon cause her brother to stumble, but she could not have known it at the time._

* * *

"Some things, Jaqen has been teaching me," she told her brother as they limped toward the temple. They were near the bridge that crossed the Long Canal. So far, she had seen nothing suspicious and began to feel that they were probably safe, but did not want to let her guard down until she and the Bear were safely on the other side of the ebony and weirwood doors.

"I know he's been instructing you with two blades, but… that… _flipping_. And _spinning…"_

"You can thank the rat-faced boy for that," the Cat told him.

"I know he is adept at tumbling and acrobatics, but I have never once seen him use those skills the way _you_ just did."

"No? I suppose he doesn't realize the potential he has to be a great warrior then. His tumbling is obviously much better than mine."

The Bear looked at her skeptically, saying, "I don't know, Cat. Your tumbling seems pretty… advanced."

* * *

_The girl could hear her brother's steel crashing down and meeting Orbelo's blade. She and the remaining dark-haired Bravo were moving further from the pool as it seemed that the Bear and Orbelo were moving toward it. Better to give them a wide berth as she finished off this arrogant cretin, she thought. She did not wish to risk getting tangled with either her brother or Orbelo until she was done with the task before her. Her back was to the pool and therefore also to her shadowy stalker, but she could feel his eyes upon her, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling her, standing on end as an uncomfortable reminder that she was being watched. For a moment, she attempted to project herself toward the man, feeling for him with her mind, trying to see if perhaps she might get some sense of him or his purpose there. She felt herself almost reach him, having some small impression of him; of his face, perhaps... She sensed, suddenly, that he was a very handsome man, but then her opponent distracted her with a powerful blow that forced her to dance aside and her mind snapped back to itself, leaving the mysterious watcher and focusing only on her blade-wielding foe._

_The Bravo she was dueling had been silent the entire time, but for his laughing when Orbelo was trying to instigate the fight. This changed as they fought on, and he gave voice to his disbelief as she harried him with a flurry of blows that he only narrowly avoided. He was more skilled than his foul-mouthed friend, but he presented only a minimal challenge for Jaqen's apprentice, especially as he was forced to face her alone._

_"How can a little girl do these things?" he grunted at the Cat, retreating from her vicious thrust with the blood stained bastard sword._

_"Didn't you hear my friend over there?" she asked, jerking her head in the Bear's direction. "I'm no little girl."_

_"Then who are you?" the Bravo demanded, and she thought that in his position, it was rather bold of him to be asking questions. Still, she obliged him, grinning wildly as she came at him again, the smaller of her blades finding the man's hip and opening a wound there._

_"Valar morghulis," she said darkly._

_The man's mouth dropped open and his eyes went wide with the realization. She almost felt sorry for him, so she extended him a reprieve, backing away from him a bit so that she could make her offer outside of the reach of his blades. He made no move to follow._

_"My brother and I just want to go back to our temple to serve," the Cat told the Bravo. "I'll leave you in peace if you walk away now."_

_The man's wide eyes slowly narrowed as the shock leeched out of them and he looked at the ground, his gaze settling on the still form of the corpse there, the one who resembled him so closely._

_"You may wish to leave with_ your _brother, but that is_ my _brother," the dark-haired Bravo told her, and his message was clear. There would be no truce. The girl knew well the call to action that came from the spilled blood of one's own family._

_She bowed her head to him in acceptance and then ran at him with speed, almost looking as if she planned to tackle the man. He stood his ground, planting his feet and readying his sword, determined to strike at her with one great blow when she came near enough, just as she expected he would. As the man leveled his cut, sending his sword in a great, horizontal arc and delivered a slice that should have separated her into two parts, an upper and lower half, the girl dropped to her knees as she had done before in the training room, sliding beneath the Bravo's blade with her back arched barely above the ground and her swords pointing back toward the edge of the Moon Pool. Just at the moment when she was sliding past her opponent and he was bringing his sword uselessly back across in the arc opposing the one he had just created, she brought her steel up with force, and both of her blades bit into the man's arm, one just below the elbow, one just above, separating the limb from his body. His severed hand still clasped the hilt of his sword as it dropped to the cobblestones next to him and he fell to his knees, screaming. The Cat quickly popped up and whirled around, approaching the crippled Bravo from behind. She gave the man mercy, delivering the gift as she had been trained to do. She grasped both of her sword hilts in her right hand as she deftly snatched the thin blade from her wrist with her left. She was on the Bravo in an instant and used the small dagger to open his neck from ear to ear, the blood gushing from the wound and drenching her sleeve as she drew her blade across his flesh._

_As her dark-haired opponent toppled forward and landed with a thud against the cobblestones, the girl saw her brother stumble over the first of the men she had killed and land awkwardly against the low wall of the pool. Orbelo was facing away from her, raising his steel for a death blow. Without pausing to think, the Cat drew back the hand clutching her dagger and then let her small blade fly, willing it to stop the Bravo and save her brother. The wicked little dagger buried itself to the hilt in Orbelo's neck, severing his spine just below his skull._

* * *

"You did well tonight, Bear," the Cat offered, unprompted. "You just need to be more aware of your feet. _Obviously_."

The boy smiled a small smile, appreciative of his sister's remark as well as her assistance as they finally made their way slowly up the steps of the temple.

"My skill is nothing compared to yours, sister," the Lyseni grunted, the effort of ascending the steps starting to show on his face. Sweat was beading his forehead and his hair was plastered above his brow.

"It's no easy thing to match your style against the style of a water dancer," she pointed out. "You held your own. That's not nothing. It's... noteworthy."

"Cat, I think that one day, you'll make a fine master."

"Hmm," the girl answered, considering his words. "I suppose I'll have to pass my final trial and take my vows first, though."

The boy nodded, his thoughts drifting to his own final trial, looming ahead, and said, "Well, whatever it is, it can't be any harder than what we just did, right?"

As they reached the ebony and weirwood doors, the girl turned to look at her brother's face for a long moment but made him no answer.

The truth was, she wasn't so sure that he _was_ right.

* * *

The Lorathi and his sister were discussing his misgivings about allowing the Cat to enter the household of the wealthy man she was charged with killing. He and his sister shared similar sensibilities and he thought he might find a more sympathetic ear by speaking with the small woman than he had when he had addressed his apprentice's plan with the principal elder. He soon found out that he was mistaken, however.

"Really, brother, I don't understand the problem," the waif was saying as she walked with him from the large dining hall. The supper had run very late that night, a spirited discussion regarding the moral implications of using dragons in warfare having erupted just as the meal had seemed to be winding down.

"A man is confused. Does his sister really not see how dangerous this could be for a mere acolyte?"

"A mere acolyte on the _cusp_ of taking her vows," his sister reminded him. "And more skilled with a _vast_ array of weaponry than any Faceless Man to ever train within these walls since… since _you_."

Jaqen seemed about to object but the waif stopped by the pool in the main temple chamber, gazing across it and holding up her hand to her brother, arresting his words on his lips.

"Consider this, brother," she began, turning to face him. "How would you feel if it were the Westerosi boy or the large Lyseni acolyte who was entering the wealthy man's house to complete this task?"

"Oh," he scoffed. "That is different."

"Really?" the woman asked him gently. "How so?"

"Boys… _men_ … are not preyed upon in the same way women are. It is _entirely_ different."

"My, my, brother," the waif said in a haughty tone, "I would never have believed that you were so _contemptuous_ of women."

"A man has no contempt," he protested. "It is merely a fact that…"

"It is _merely a fact_ that the girl's skills in every way exceed those of the two boys I mentioned. She is more capable of successfully completing this assignment than either of them would be, yet you admit that you would have no problem sending them into the same situation in her place," the waif pointed out. "She made the _Tears of Lys_ , brother. She wasn't even paying attention during half the lesson and yet she perfected the most difficult of poisons. _And_ the principal elder values her above all the others. I can tell by the way he speaks about her and the allowances he makes for her."

At her last words, the gaze of the Lorathi narrowed but he did not have a chance to question his sister about her observation before she was gently admonishing him.

"Brother, I think you ought to reflect on what is driving your worry."

The Lorathi looked at his sister, his eyes unfathomable. He cocked his head and seemed about to say something when they both heard the great doors of the temple bang open. The pair of masters turned to peer down the long corridor so that they might see who had entered the sanctuary at this late hour. When Jaqen's eye fell upon Mattine, covered in blood, supporting her large brother, he rushed to her side, the waif at his heels.

"Are you hurt?" the Lorathi asked the girl quickly, his tone short but even, although his bronze eyes were frantically inspecting her, looking for a source of the blood she was wearing. Her arm was _drenched_ and there was a huge smear across her breast.

"No, not me," his apprentice said, and then bobbing her head toward her brother who was draped over her, she continued, "It's him. He's got some broken ribs, I think, and his arm has been pierced."

"Come, boy," the waif directed the Lyseni tersely, giving Jaqen a look that seemed to say, _Do you see now?_ She turned on her heel and briskly led the Bear toward her work room. The boy removed his arm from around his sister's shoulders and smiled at her in gratitude before he limped off after the tiny woman who would tend to his wounds, giving him something to both stave off infection and ease his pain. Mattine and Jaqen watched them go and then the assassin turned to the Cat.

"I should probably get back to the inn," the girl said before her master could address her. "I don't want to be missed."

"Lovely girl, the _blood_ ," Jaqen said a bit hoarsely, ignoring her insistence that she had to leave. He grasped her shoulders and looked her over once again. "Whose…"

"A trio of _Bravos_ who overestimated their skills. It's a long story."

"A man would hear this tale," her master said, taking her unstained arm in his and leading her down the corridor and past the dark fountain. "And we should find a girl some clothes which are less... _decorated_ in this gaudy crimson."

"Jaqen, the Bear will be unable to fight for a time, I imagine, with those cracked ribs."

"Just so."

"How am I to continue my training?"

"It seems to a man that a girl has found new partners with which to spar. There is no shortage of strutting _Bravos_ near the Moon Pool." His expression was smirking and she knew that he was not serious, but she balled up her fist and punched his shoulder anyway.

"Remind a man to teach you how to throw a proper punch," her mentor told her dryly. "Do not worry yourself, lovely girl. A man will see to your training."

The Cat began to slow down, her steps becoming sluggish as her adrenaline drained from her. She had earned her exhaustion, having worked a long day at the inn, followed by sparring with the Bear, then dueling the ill-fated Bravos, and finally dragging her brother halfway across Braavos. Her lids drooped a bit but then she remembered something and it made her pop her eyes back open, jerking her head toward her master, boring into him with Mattine's wide, doe eyes. Jaqen raised his eyebrows at her, awaiting her words.

"There was someone there with us besides the _Bravos_ ," the girl told her master. "A man who stayed in the shadow of the alley near the tavern across the Moon Pool from the inn. You know the one I mean?"

 _Indeed, he knew the one._ He nodded.

"He was there when the Bear and I were sparring, just watching us. Then, when the _Bravos_ approached, he seemed to become more interested and he moved closer to us, but still not close enough to see. He just… _watched_."

"Anyone might watch a duel,” her master pointed out. “For some, this is entertainment."

"I can't explain how I know it, but I know he wasn't just some bystander watching a duel. He was there to see us specifically. To see _me_ , I think."

Jaqen looked sharply at his apprentice when she made her assertion and his grip on her arm tightened almost imperceptibly. But, the Cat was perceptive, and she felt the change and the worry it signaled.

"What?" she whispered to him.

He just shook his head and stared ahead, obviously considering her words and their possible meaning. He did not speak again before they reached the bath.

"A man will retrieve your robe. He knows just where you left it," he told her as he helped her pour the water from the kettles warming over the crackling fire into the great tub. "Can a girl manage her bloody garments or must a man cut her out of them?"

The Cat made a show of rolling her eyes at the Lorathi and hoped that he could not see the flush creeping up her neck in the dim light of the bath chamber. She remembered all too well the last time they had been in this same room together. Jaqen told her he would return shortly and then he was gone. The girl was left to strip her sticky, gaudy raiment by the light of the fireplace. She saw an unlit candle sitting in a small spot carved into the stone wall next to the door and approached it.

"Nar 'amala," she whispered, holding the image of the unlit wick in her mind lightly. She gave a small, satisfied grin when the thing flamed to life. Wearily, she pulled off the ruined clothes, leaving her daggers in a small pile next to the copper tub, and hopped into the basin, the water so hot it made her skin sting and turn pink almost instantly. The bath took on its own pinkish cast as the blood that had soaked through her blouse and adhered to her arms and chest began to soften and drift into the steaming water. She found a large chunk of the waif's soap on the floor next to the tub and quickly lathered herself, meaning to clean her skin of the red residue as quickly as possible and get out of the tub before her master could return.

As she scrubbed herself, her mind drifted back to the dark figure in the alleyway and her impression of him. It was so cursory that she couldn't be sure it was even real. Had her mind just created the idea of a handsome face or had she perhaps seen more with her eyes than she realized while dueling? Or was the impression truly lifted from the man's own mind, the way she had seen brief glimpses of Jaqen's thoughts when they were separated by his bolted door? How could she ever be sure?

She mulled this over as she rinsed the soap and scum from her skin, the froth collecting on the surface of the water looking pinkish in the dim light, just like the water. The girl splashed her face a few times, scrubbing at Mattine's skin with her fingers, and then satisfied that she was as clean as a cook needed to be and notably less bloody, she pulled herself up and out of the tub, dripping as she padded her way to the pile of clean, folded linen in the corner. She swathed herself in _two_ large linen wraps, looking somewhat like a small, fluffy, Mattine-shaped cloud and then stood in front of the dying embers in the hearth, enjoying their warmth upon her feet and legs. She was surprised that her master had not yet returned with her robe but did not wonder at it too much. _He might have stopped in to check on the Bear. Or else, he had found some poor, young acolyte roaming the passageways and had snuck up on him and threatened him with a blade, admonishing him for not staying alert enough._ She snickered to herself at the thought, relishing the idea of someone else being on the receiving end of some of Jaqen's less-pleasant _instruction_ for a change.

As her brief moment of amusement faded away, the girl stared into the embers of the fire, glowing red hot, and felt her eyelids growing heavy once more. As she gazed into the hearth and saw the few small flames dancing near the corner of the firebox, she felt her eye drawn to the center of the red and orange tongues. As her gaze softened, she thought she could almost make out a face in the flickering light. A _handsome_ face. No, _two_ faces; the second one not so handsome, but somehow... _familiar_.

* * *

"She is as you said," a low voice whispered from beneath a dark hood. The features of the face were hidden by the deep shadow thrown by the hood but had they been exposed to the light, anyone gazing upon them would agree that they were undeniably handsome. "It is quite remarkable, really. How did you know?"

The eyes of his companion were pale blue and piercing, but it was with a memory that came from behind a pair of dark eyes set in a swarthy face that he recalled a tiny hand gripping a tiny sword.

The handsome man's companion smiled his tight smile which did not reach his blue eyes and he said, "I have always known it. It was always meant to be so. Did she see you?" At his question, he raised his eyes to gaze into the blackness of the hood and somehow, he seemed to find his handsome companion's eyes buried in the shadow there, holding them as he awaited his answer.

"I'm certain that she did, though no more than a silhouette," the hooded man replied. "She knows she was watched. She does not know by whom."

"Hmm," the handsome man's companion mused. "She may be much more on her guard now. If she is _too_ wary, it could prove difficult... But still, I am grateful to you for bringing me this report. I cannot witness her skill for myself, for obvious reasons."

The handsome man nodded his understanding, asking his companion, "What would you have of me now?"

"She has been given a task. I need you to see to it that she completes it, but do not interfere unless her life is at serious risk. She must also remain innocent. I would prefer she not know you are there, but after tonight, it may be unavoidable. Still, tell her as little as possible while keeping her trust, if it comes to that."

"She does not know what you are planning," the handsome man responded. "Either here, or across the sea."

"She does not know I am _alive_ ," his blue-eyed companion corrected and the hooded man cocked his head, not understanding, but not needing to. "And for now, it must remain so." The two men grew quiet, each thinking about the girl and what awaited her in the near future. Each thinking about her likelihood of success or failure at the task before her. Each thinking how this would shape the plans already set in motion. The handsome man spoke first, making an observation that he felt would prompt his companion to reveal more of this plan to him.

"She will become the sharp point of the long sword you will wield from here, its bite felt all the way across the sea."

The handsome man's companion nodded, murmuring, "Just so" before he looked up, gazing across the dark waters of the bay and out at the ships moored in the distance, their inky shapes just detectable in the brilliant moonlight. "But the entire objective of sharpening that point is garnering her trust and protecting her life."

"Indeed? Not to be used as a weapon?"

"This girl may be a natural born warrior and an elite assassin but in the end, that is not the life she will lead. All of her skills are meant to ensure she survives long enough to serve her one, true purpose."

"And what _is_ that purpose?" the handsome man prompted.

"What purpose does any woman serve in this world?" his cryptic companion replied.

* * *

 **Diamond Eyes (Boom-Lay-Boom-Lay-Boom)-** Shinedown (there are no shortage of awesome, Arya-kicks-ass songs out there, but after considering multiple options, this one seemed to fit the best)


	34. Chapter 34

The wind blew sharp and cold off the water, rustling the fallen leaves on the ground and causing them to swirl about her feet like tiny cyclones, brittle and brown. She bristled a bit as she padded to the edge of the forest of mixed hardwoods and evergreens, feeling the cold even through her thick coat. There were no weirwoods here in this wilderness; it was too far south, and so it did not feel like a proper forest. Even the scent was wrong.

She had arrived, once again, in the place where the air smelled more of salt than trees. The last time she had seen this village, it had been bleak and forlorn, with as many of the ale houses and shops and homes ruined and abandoned as were inhabited and working, but it was worse now. Much, much worse. The entire settlement was defined by burnt tree stumps, collapsed and blackened remnants of huts and barns whose shapes were merely suggestive of the original structures, and barren patches of ground not fit for anything besides treading over in the hopes of soon being elsewhere. The charred ruins were all older now and so no longer smoldering; not for a long time. But still, there were the dark scars of the fire scattered all about and she could smell the soot with her sharp nose. It was not fresh, but it was there, the faintly acrid scent of scorched earth and stone and trees. There were some sound structures as well, newly built, and earlier, she had seen a few people milling around them. _Prey_ , some part of her thought. _Food._

 _No, not prey. Just people working, repairing nets and boats, or selling the bounty of the waters, bundled against the cold,_ some other part of her corrected.

There was life in this desolate place, but little enough of joy. The people had a watchfulness about them; a sense of pressing on but always with one eye looking back in sadness. Life here, near the water, was tentative and wary and careworn, the way life inevitably was after injustice and horror had visited a place. This village had endured great tragedy and it had not yet recovered. Maybe it never would. She had known the village once; had known the waters and the traders and the captains pulling into the little port. Or, at least, the girl inside of her had known these things, but even she did not recognize it now. The girl inside of the wolf felt sad, at least as much as she could be made to feel sad in the face of horror anymore. This place was a part of her story, although it was hard to believe it as she looked upon the desolation with her wolf eyes. Here, she had sold a horse for silver to take her over the waters, but it was another coin that had bought her passage.

 _Valar morghulis_ , she thought and her wolf skin bristled once more at the memory.

_That was long ago, when she had been here. There was no trace of her now; she had sailed away from this poor little port and was not like to come back. Who would return to such a place?_

She had first led her cousins to the location of the great, hulking knight and the children cloaked in their innocence. _The inn_ , the girl in her thought. _The inn at the crossroads._ They had arrived there too early. Here, it seemed she had come far too late. There was no lingering scent of the girl. She knew inside of her from a shared memory that she _had_ been here and she also knew that she was here no longer. Sometime after the girl had left, _this_ had happened. This ravaging; this scarring of the land; this breaking of the people. Did the girl leave her wildfire trailing in her wake, consuming all that she left behind?

_That couldn't be; all that I desire to destroy lays before me, not behind._

_Revenge. Retribution. Justice._ These words meant nothing to a wolf but they stoked the wildfire within the girl and it burned on, fed by her hatred and anger. It was all that was left to her, despite her own unique talents and the very real magic that existed in the world and all of the things unknown and marvelous and powerful.

For all the dragonglass candles; for all the visions in flames; for all the dragons which now darkened Dornish skies; for all the foreign words coupled with blood that imparted small abilities; for the all the strange and extraordinary ways her consciousness could be willed to move from place to place without restriction, betraying its inconstant nature; for all the skill that no broken girl should possess; for all the love that no broken girl should be able to engender; for all of the respect and power and wealth her very name should command; for all the consideration she should receive for a birthright or resemblance or prophecy; for all the intensity of a bond between girl and wolf (a bond so strong that it was as if distance and time and the whole of the sea and the land between them was but a single step or half a breath or nothing at all); for all of this inexplicable and unimaginable power that pulsed through the world, emanating from one heaven or another, from one god's hand or another, from one source or another, she could still not be given what it was she really wanted.

None of it would make her father breathe again. None of it would make Lady Stoneheart be Catelyn Stark again. None of it would raise Robb or Grey Wind. None of it would change the sickening way Bran and Rickon had died. None of it could rewrite Cersei's words that led to Lady's fate. None of it could erase the day she ran into the stables and recovered Needle and then used it to take her first life. None of it could restore the destiny that was meant for Arya Stark. For all of the magic that there was in the world, for all the dark power, for all the wondrous and mysterious and unfathomable things, the past could not be repaired or restored to the way it ought to have been. All that was left to her was the determination to shape the future into what she wanted it to be.

So, for the wolf and the girl, all of the magic evidenced in the sorcery of Asshai; the fire breathed by creatures long extinct but now living once again; her own ability to be _in_ her wolf or _in_ a cat or _in_ an eel or _in_ the mind of a man (however tenuously) was given only the value and consideration of a tool she might use to accomplish what it was that was left to her to accomplish. Her single wish, her most cherished hope, her only desire was to _make them pay._ The future she saw was the future she had always seen: blood and steel. For her lullaby, she would have Cersei's screams. Instead of wedding vows, she would have Ser Ilyn's head. In place of the cries of her own babe, she would have the sound of Ser Meryn's blood spilling from his throat and splashing onto the ground. In place of warm nights in bed with her Lord husband, she would have the last breaths of the traitors of the Night's Watch. To her mind, it was a fair trade. She cared not if she tore out their throats with her very teeth and drank their warm blood as it fled their veins or if she carved out their hearts with the fine point of a child's Needle. The girl's heart wanted what it wanted. The wolf's heart wanted the girl.

Neither of their desires would be met at Saltpans, it seemed.

The wolf felt restless, knowing she had come, once again, at the wrong time. The pack could easily have overrun this town, undefended as it was. The girl could see that as readily as the wolf sensed it. They could have eaten, but the meat was meager enough and would taste of sorrow and turn their stomachs, or so the girl thought. Better to stay in the wilderness surrounding the area and hunt such prey as lived there. She gazed out over the water and it showed muddy and low with the tide out, not the sparkling blue and green of her memory. Even the water seemed to echo the waste and ruin of the village. There was nothing of beauty here except her cousins; not like it was across the Narrow Sea. She turned to move deeper into the forest so that she might join her pack. They needed to hunt.

The great beast padded silently away from the village but her progress was stopped by a hand in her fur… on her shoulder… She stopped and turned her snout upward, catching a scent on the wind. It was an odd sort of smell, strange in these parts, but the girl knew it. Some sort of spice…

"Lovely girl, did you think a man had abandoned you?"

The Cat cracked one eye open and saw her master sitting on the edge of the small bed in which she was curled. She was wearing a man's _favorite_ blouse, noticeably wrinkled after having sat, wadded up, at the foot of her bed since her departure from the temple to assume the role of cook at a popular inn. Wrinkles or no, it was a better option for sleepwear than the filthy shift she had left in the corner of her room _or_ the obscenely sheer sleeping gown that a widow had been gifted by a Pentoshi ship's captain. The shift, still stained with canal muck, had not fared well during her absence since it was still damp when it was abandoned in a ball. It seemed to have actually _mildewed_ a bit. The sheer gown… well, that was buried deep in the bottom of her trunk.

"I waited for a bit," she yawned, "but it started to get cold as the fired died in the bath chamber, so I came here to find some clothes. I only meant to lay down for a while as I waited for you. I wasn't expecting to sleep here. I really need to get back to the inn."

"It is so late now, it makes no sense for you to leave. You would be better served to rest here and then return to the inn at dawn."

"Then… why did you wake me?"

"A girl was howling."

His face appeared serious but the Cat could not believe it was true. Nymeria hadn't even howled in her… _dream_?

"What? No! I wasn't _howling_ ," she insisted, slightly horrified at the thought. Not that there was anything wrong with howling generally... but to do so in front of one's master…

"No, a girl was not howling," the Lorathi admitted, his bronze eyes twinkling in the candlelight. "But, you did seem restless."

"Where _were_ you, Jaqen?"

He pulled her black and white robe from his lap and held the folded garment up for her to see, showing her that he had it as if in answer of her question. He then leaned over and draped the robe over the foot rail of her bed.

"So… it took you that long to retrieve my robe? Where did I leave it, in Lys?"

"As a man left you to do you this favor, a matter arose that needed tending to. It prevented… a timely return."

"I noticed," the Cat wearing Mattine's face said, yawning again. "Did you see the Bear?"

"Hmm? No. A man believes his sister sent the large boy to his cell to rest."

"So, what was this _matter_ that arose?"

Jaqen looked at the girl blankly for a moment and then told her that not everything was something for her to know. It was a familiar song and though she understood the need for secrecy and caution in this temple of assassins (some of whom had attempted very recently to assassinate _her_ , or so it had seemed), his refusal to answer her question irked her nonetheless. Her passive face became somewhat pinched and her soft lips hardened themselves in a firm line as she turned her back to him, rolling to face the opposite side of the bed from which he was sitting. She used her fist to punch at her thin pillow a bit, trying to reshape it into a more comfortable form. Without a word, she jerked the edge of her blanket up higher, closing her eyes with a forceful sigh. The whole thing might have been a bit overdone. A moment later, the girl felt her master's fingers curl over her shoulder and rest there. Her eyes opened instantly at his touch and she felt immediately vexed.

" _What_?" she demanded, flipping from her side to her back and looking up at him.

Jaqen employed his typical purr when he spoke, seeking to assure himself that she was truly alright after the events of the night.

"A girl was not hurt in her duel?"

She did not allow herself to feel appreciative of his concern and instead, folded her arms across her breast, furrowing her brow before she replied.

"I said so, didn't I?" she answered irritably. "But it's late, and I really don't think _now_ is the best time to discuss what happened. It has been an exceedingly long day. Had you come right back as you said you would, we could have had this discussion already, but since _a matter arose…_ "

One corner of the Lorathi's mouth curled up into a half-smile at the small tirade of his apprentice.

"Shh," he soothed, his patronizing manner causing her fury to grow. "A man would not hear of a girl giving up her sleep simply for the telling of a tale. It can wait. It is said that lovely girls need their sleep. That it… helps with the beauty?"

"Jaqen, what are you talking… do you actually think I care… Oooh!" she seethed, caught between sitting up to confront him about his ridiculous comment and turning away from him once again. It led to her curling up slightly, then curling slightly over, then up again, and then over again, all while making tiny, dissatisfied squeaks. The effect was quite comical.

Her mentor could contain his amusement no longer and actually _snorted._ It was positively infuriating. After all she had been through that night, her temper was short and she wasn't renowned for her mild manner as it was. Then, to be left waiting for what seemed like hours, only to finally drift off to asleep, just to be awakened before enough time had passed for the sleep to do any good... It was not to be borne!

"A girl should be calm. Mattine has a lovely face, sleep or no sleep," her master told her in those soothing tones that nearly inspired her to show him _how proper_ was the punch that she could throw. At his face. Repeatedly.

"So, you like Mattine's face, do you? Well, when I'm done with it, you can just..."

Before the girl could complete her thought, her master interrupted her with his murmuring purr.

"This Braavosi cook is quite lovely, but a man much prefers a girl's _true_ face."

She was not sure what she should make of that.

There was no hint of emotion in the expression of Jaqen H'ghar as he spoke the words. There was no longing in his eyes. He showed no evidence of desire. He said that he preferred her true face in the same way a man might say he preferred Dornish wine to the vintages from the Reach, or that he preferred to fight with a war hammer rather than a sword. It was a simple statement of fact, despite the purring way in which he said it. He might prefer her true face because it was easier for him to read. Or, because in a sea of beautiful, olive-skinned women, her face was unique for its fairness, a mere novelty. Or, because he was simply used to it and had grown comfortable with her _Stark look_.

He called Mattine's face _quite lovely_ and said he preferred his apprentice's true face as if it meant nothing at all to him; as if _beauty_ held no value. And why would it, when one could wear as stunning or ugly a face as one chose, for the small price of blood and the favor of those within the House of Black and White? And that new face, as winsome or grotesque as it might be, would not reveal anything of the wearer beneath it. Why would he value appearance when he could conjure the handsomest or most beastly of faces with as little effort as breathing?

He had called Mattine's countenance _quite lovely_ in a way that seemed to suggest that _quite lovely_ was no more preferable than _grossly disfigured._ As if it was mere observation. As if Mattine's doe eyes and smooth, unmarked olive skin would not turn his head or command his attention under different circumstance (circumstances that did not include the fact that Mattine was dead and her face had been peeled off of her corpse and plastered over the face of his apprentice so that she might assume the dead girl's identity in order to carry out an assassination bought with blood and flesh).

Jaqen had said _a man prefers a girl's true face_ and though the words themselves might be construed in a completely different way, his face seemed to suggest to his apprentice that it was _not_ her snowy cheek that called to him; as if her eyes, shining grey like the waters of the sea during a winter's storm, did not matter to him; as if the ribbon of her dark braid did not bring sharp focus to how lovely she had become when it weighted his hand; as if the curve of her jaw and the bow of her upper lip and the sighing perfection of her voice and soft feel of her shoulder beneath his curving fingers meant nothing to him.

And perhaps what he meant to show her was that he valued the things which lay beneath all of that; her stubborn courage and independence; her wit and determination. Perhaps what affected him beyond the way her very loveliness affected him was her loyalty to and esteem of her master as her savior; the rescuer of a small girl; a shadowy, mysterious force who had brought her from the harsh land of her birth as it existed for her when she was but a girl of one and ten. Perhaps what touched him was her appreciation of him for delivering her to more kindly arms.

All of this, a girl determined from an expression, or, more precisely, the lack of one when a man spoke his words. Part of her training within the walls of the temple had been meant to make her adept at reading faces and knowing the truth behind the words that were spoken. She had gotten very good at this skill, despite her protestations that it was easier to beat the truth from a man than read it in his words. She had acquired the skills necessary to see the truth behind the frowns and smiles and hesitations of men and she was getting better and better at this. But she had never been very good at reading her master. Or, perhaps he was just better at not being read. As she sat thinking and wondering, her master thought as well, but his eyes were quiet and his face still. The girl considered his words regarding her face and Mattine's face and wondered...

_What value did any face have for a Faceless Man?_

And yet, Jaqen did value her face, though his lovely girl could not see the truth of that. He _saw_ her and drank in her loveliness and noted her beauty in a way he had never noted beauty before. He cherished it. He relished that fair cheek and the full bottom lip which a girl was so fond of chewing. He gloried in the way the curve of her shoulder felt in his palm. He did not know if he loved the look of her simply because it was _hers_ or if he would have loved the look of her even if he knew aught about her.

Truth be told, he did not care.

It made no difference.

He felt no possession of her. Indeed, he had no way to _understand_ such possession much in the same way _she_ had no way to understand romantic love. When she was young enough that the world was still uncomplicated and she had opportunity to be exposed to such love, she had thought it stupid. Her only models of such things were the stories her sister favored but which _she_ ridiculed, the odd serving girl sighing or giggling when Theon Greyjoy gave out one of his crooked smiles, and the occasional feelings her parents displayed for one another, so long ago now that her recollection of them had faded enough to be a mere spectre of memory. Now that she was of an age where such feelings would be normal and expected of her, her understanding of love had been shaped and marred by all the horrors she had seen that had called themselves love. As far as she could tell, love was _weakness_ and that was something she could not tolerate.

The girl had no way to interpret the birds taking flight beneath her breast or the snakes writhing in her gut the same way her master had no way to interpret the unfamiliar longing and desire he felt, the burning that started deep within him, behind _his_ breast, when he saw her leap onto her brother's back, laughing in her breathless way as she was spun in dizzying circles or when he thought of her in the household of a wealthy man who desired the grieving girl whose face the Cat wore. He had never experienced possession. He had never _owned_. He had never had reason for jealousy and so it was a sensation for which he had no reference. As a servant of the Many-Faced god, he had always had everything a man could need or want at his fingertips and so there had never been a need to envy other men their fortune. He had lived his life behind the walls of the House of Black and White. Even when he was out in the world doing the bidding of the order, he took them with him, those walls; those dictates; those comfortable parameters that kept him from straying too far from Him of Many Faces. The one time he had ignored his walls, he had decided he had the power to shape a destiny and had brought home a stray, highborn girl. His life had never been the same. He could not say if this was to his benefit or his detriment, but he was irrevocably changed and he would not change himself back even were such a thing possible.

And it was in this way that a lovely girl had become _his_ lovely girl, and he slowly began to see what it was to _have_ something.

As they sat together in silence, each lost to thought, they were considering two sides of the same problem and they had both reached the same conclusion even though they had no way of knowing it. They both agreed that love was for fools. How foolish of them not to realize what fools they were.

* * *

Jaqen shook the girl awake sooner than she would have liked but later than she needed in order to not be rushed in her journey back to the inn. As it was, she had barely enough time to pull on breeches and tuck her master's favorite shirt into them before she was flying down the steps of the temple in the pre-dawn gloom en route to her familiar kitchen to start the breakfast for the inn's patrons. She realized that she would miss that warm kitchen when she entered the household of the dead man. She would miss Olive and Syrio and the soft cocoon of companionship that had enveloped her when she entered the inn as Mattine. With all of the thoughts surrounding her soon-to-change circumstances, it was only vaguely that the realization of Jaqen having stayed with her all night, keeping watch over her, crept around in the back of her head. She did not dwell on it. Her master was worried. As he had never been needlessly anxious, she was grateful for his watchfulness even if she did not fully understand it.

The Faceless cook had just enough time to change into Mattine's plain brown dress and hide her breeches and blouse before Olive came into the kitchen.

"Good morning, Mattine," the tavern girl greeted. "Did you sleep well?"

"My sleep was excellent," the girl replied, wondering if the lie showed in her face at all. _I really must get a mirror._

"You look well-rested," Olive agreed. "It's a good thing your room is on the alley side of the inn. What a racket those _Bravos_ made last night! Oh, if only they would learn how to die in silence! Such clattering of steel!"

"Did you watch the duel?" Mattine asked, somewhat sharply.

"Me? No. I have seen enough duels to last me a lifetime. It's the curse of living so near the Moon Pool. After all these years, I just want some peace so I can get my beauty rest."

Mattine scowled at the turn of phrase but the wench did not see her as she set about pulling platters and tankards from the cupboards for the diners soon to be awake and hungry. As the two girls began chopping and mixing and cooking, the Cat suddenly recalled that her brother had promised to attend the midday meal at the inn later. She told Olive as much.

"Keep your curls pretty," the cook laughed.

"How do you know this man, anyway?" Olive wanted to know, patting her soft, brown ringlets.

"Oh... I'm teaching him to dance."

Olive just looked at the cook strangely but then shook her head and laughed in her way and the conversation moved on to other things as light banter between friends is like to do. Syrio arrived shortly to help clean the dishes the girls had dirtied in the preparation of the meal and the whole scene had the unmistakable cast of happiness and contentment about it. It was wonderful. And _unsettling._

The false cook thought that perhaps the unsettled feeling was more due to the significance of this midday meal and not that the Cat was unable to comfortably insert herself into a domestic circumstance that was gratifying and even happy. The Bear was coming, after all, and likely her mark, the _wealthy man,_ as well. There was much to do and no mistakes to be made. Well, at least as far as the wealthy man was concerned. The apprentice knew she needed to embody the perfect combination of reluctant submission and latent desire. Mattine had to keep the dead man interested without raising suspicion by suddenly becoming enthusiastic about his offer. She wasn't sure if the wealthy man himself would be bothered by such a shift in disposition, but she suspected it would alert his guard, especially after their recent run-in. The guard had struck her as an old sellsword, too tired to march across the harsh land in the name of someone else's cause for the promise of plunder. He had not become the personal guard to the wealthy man because he needed a challenge. He did it so he could feed himself without expending much effort.

The guard was not much of a threat but he did maintain his powers of observation and probably still had that sixth sense that those who trade in danger and death often possess. _That_ was what she had to be mindful of. She felt he was more _aware_ of her than she would like and would therefore be more wary of any missteps she made. She could ill-afford any mistakes. The Cat had no doubt that she could best the sellsword in any circumstance, especially given the small paralyzing trick her master had taught her, but her mission was to deliver the gift to the wealthy man, not his guard. The Kindly Man was very insistent on the acolytes following their contracts precisely. This was not a mission for charging in with swords at the ready. It called for a much more delicate touch (admittedly, not her strongest skill. Perhaps that is why the principal elder had agreed so readily to allow her to take this assignment. It would be good practice in an art she had not completely mastered.)

The Bear arrived at the inn as early as it was seemly to do so. He wore sober clothes of black that made the cook think immediately of the Night's Watch when she spied him through the kitchen door as Syrio burst through. The small boy was carrying cups and platters collected from those who had dined upstairs for breakfast and as he swung the door open wide to enter the kitchen, the Cat could just see her brother taking a seat near the back of the room ( _the same table at which a captain and a widow had dined before)._ The dark clothes marked him as part of the gentry of Braavos, the Cat knew, and this would impress Olive. The cook wondered if he had brought the serving girl a gift. There were no shortage of small tokens such as a young woman might like in the storage vaults under the temple. The door swung shut and the Bear was hidden from his sister's eye. Moments later, she spied him again as Olive pushed through the doors. The large apprentice looked none the worse for wear considering his late night activities, at least as far as his sister could tell from this distance.

"That fine man in the back wants ale and _whatever the cook wants to send him_ ," Olive giggled. "If you don't want him, Mattine, I think I'll have to have him. He's much too delectable to leave sitting there all alone. When will your friend arrive? A poor serving girl is growing lonesome..."

Mattine laughed at her friend's false pout and then pushed her arm lightly, telling her, "That's _him_ , stupid! Now, go flirt until your heart is content."

The wench's eyes widened with delight and her dimples appeared. She quickly pinched her cheeks and smoothed her skirts and before the cook could utter further encouragement, the plump girl had managed to sashay through the door back into the common room with her sights set on her prey.

"Gods be good, the Bear has no idea what he's in for," the cook snickered and Syrio just smiled at her without any true understanding of what she meant.

Mattine was suddenly very busy with preparing the noon meal for the rush of people that had decided to dine with them that day and she and Syrio set about their tasks in earnest, punctuated by the frequent in and out movements of Olive and Will, clearing dishes, delivering food, refilling pitchers with ale and carafes with wine. Even Staaviros showed up, lending an extra pair of hands. The cook settled into the comfortable rhythm of meal service and found herself thinking mostly of the food and the kitchen banter of the others. It was for that reason that it surprised her when Staaviros reentered the kitchen and placed his hand on her back, drawing her attention away from her broth and bread.

"There is a man asking to see you," he said quietly and his face looked grave.

"Alright," the cook said, wiping her hands on her apron, preparing to enter the common room to greet this man. _It must be the wealthy man. He's come back for my answer._ This was very good.

"It's the same man who... had the misunderstanding with Syrio," the innkeeper continued, and his tone seemed to carry a warning. The girl stopped and met his eyes.

"Alright," she said again, but slowly this time, and it had the sound of a question; an invitation for him to share his misgivings.

Staaviros' voice dropped a notch lower and he nearly whispered, "It's important to keep patrons such as this man happy, but you must understand, he... has a... _reputation,_ as men of great wealth often do. They are perhaps... less _careful_ than they ought to be with those they deem beneath them. Please be on your guard. I made your... _friend_ certain promises. I do not mean to invite his ire by allowing you to come to harm."

By _friend,_ the girl assumed Staaviros meant Jaqen, or, more precisely, _Marco._

Mattine cocked her head and gave Staaviros a winning smile, assuring him that she would be very careful and that he did not have to worry about her. Inside, she was reeling a bit. _Jaqen asked an innkeeper to promise he would keep me safe? Preposterous! What could an innkeeper do that I could not?_

The cook nodded at her employer and pulled away from his touch, pushing through the doors and scanning the room to find the face she sought. The wealthy man sat in his same spot. _A creature of habit,_ the Cat noted _._ His guard stood to his right, as ever, and as Mattine strode toward the man's table, she met the eyes of the rugged sellsword. She had to rein in her desire to pull up short, for that would have certainly been noticed and given rise to the suspicion of her by both men. But she was undoubtedly taken aback, for there was _something_ about the guard... Something _new._ Something _different._ He was the same but he was _not_ the same. He now radiated a danger and a sort of treacherous energy that she had not sensed in him before. Perhaps she had somehow given herself away during their last encounter... Or, maybe it was simply that following the incident with Syrio, he was bound to be more on guard, ready for the slightest sign of trouble. But, whatever it was, she felt she needed to reassess her complete dismissal of the threat the man posed. She tucked that into the corner of her mind she reserved for _problems to be solved later_.

"Ah, my dear _Mattine_ ," the wealthy man drawled, obviously expecting her to be impressed that he had deigned to recall her name.

"My lord," the girl returned formally, dipping a curtsy as she shyly turned her eyes to the floor. She could feel her brother's eyes upon her as well as Olive's.

"Have you considered my offer?" the man asked, not wasting any time.

The girl felt her skin crawling and though it would have been possible for the sensation to be caused by the undertone of the wealthy man's voice, as if he were suggesting his _offer_ included something beyond employment in his household, the girl knew her discomfort stemmed from a different source. The gaze of the guard was intense and it nearly felt as if his eyes had latched onto her with fingers as cold and icy as the frozen branches of the trees near Winterfell. She hazarded a glance up to the guard's face and found his eyes bright and sharp. This caused her to change tactics a bit, feeling an acceptance of the wealthy man's proposal now would confirm whatever distrust the guard seemed to be displaying. _More reluctance_ , she decided.

"I... have, my lord," the girl began hesitantly, her eyes dropping once again to the floor. "I... I know that you are being very kind to offer me a place in your household, but... I just feel I cannot impose on that kindness. And the innkeeper, Staaviros, well... he depends on me. I would not like to leave him in such a bad position. He just lost one cook. It would be hard for him to lose another." She ventured to look up at the wealthy man's face as she finished speaking and saw him narrow his eyes a bit. He seemed to be considering the possibility that Staaviros might have already claimed the affections that he was seeking for himself. A subtle turn of her body, meant to display Mattine's curves to their best advantage without seeming to do so consciously, settled the matter for Hellind's former lover.

"Nonsense!" the man boomed. "I shall speak to this innkeeper. I am certain an arrangement can be made. I will not accept defiance in this matter, Mattine."

There was a hint of a threat in his voice, the Cat thought; a small display of the sinister nature that had led to the contract on his life being taken in the first place. The girl nodded timidly, thinking, _what a foul sack of flesh you are, my lord_ as she curtsied quickly and scampered back to the kitchen. Before she crossed the threshold and left the common room, she gave a furtive look and a small signal to her brother and noted quickly that she was understood. He would meet her in the alleyway later. As the cook entered the kitchen, she was followed almost immediately by Olive who stepped very near to her and whispered urgently in her ear.

"Do you know what you're doing?" the tavern wench asked.

Mattine's face was placid as she turned toward her friend.

"I know exactly what I am doing."

Olive regarded the cook with a slight frown and keen eyes and then inquired, "And how will your handsome man take the news that you are moving into a new household, after he went to the trouble to get you this position?"

"We have discussed it, and he was not happy, but he accepts my judgment," the cook told Olive honestly.

"A wealthy, handsome man defers to the judgment of his low-born lover? That must be the first I have heard of such a thing," the wench commented in a tone of almost disinterest. Now it was Mattine who frowned slightly and _her_ doe eyes that looked keenly at her friend. _What exactly did Olive believe is going on here?_

"Enough of my handsome man. What of yours?" the cook queried the wench in an attempt to redirect the conversation.

At her question, Olive actually blushed. She began to describe her interaction with the Cat's brother and the plans they had made to meet late in the evening, after the supper was finished and Olive might have some free time to slip away from the inn. The cook nodded at her enthusiastically, smiling at the tavern girl's obvious pleasure. She was sure her brother was just as happy as Olive and thought his injuries would likely keep his actions honorable, even if his intentions were not. As the girls continued their lighthearted discourse on love and men, Staaviros entered the kitchen and told Olive that he needed her in the common room helping the diners. The wench gave the cook a knowing look and then left the kitchen to tend to the guests of the tavern. Once the door had closed behind her, the innkeeper turned to his cook and sighed.

"Atius Biro has asked that I release you from your obligation to me so that you may join his household," Staaviros told her, and from his tone, she knew that the word _asked_ didn't exactly describe what it was that the wealthy man had done.

"And what did you say?"

"I told him that the decision was yours, that Braavos is a _free_ city," the innkeeper said, looking at her ruefully. "First, a man with an air of menace comes into my inn and says to me _valar morghulis_ before he _requests_ that I find a place for you here. Next, one of the most powerful men in the city comes into my tavern and demands that I release you into his service. I don't know who you are, girl, but it is obvious to me that you are no ordinary cook if you can enchant the Faceless Men and Atius Biro so."

The girl made her doe eyes as wide and guileless as she knew how and then turned them on Staaviros. He regarded her coolly for a moment but then his disposition softened. He sighed before he spoke again to her.

"Still, I've no wish to see you harmed. I've no cause to complain of your work. You get along well with the rest of the staff," the innkeeper admitted and then he placed his hand on her shoulder. "I will hide you if you need me to. I can tell Lord Atius that you have left. Just say the word, girl."

"No, Staaviros. You are very kind," the girl told him sincerely, "but this is something I must do."

"Are you certain?" the man asked her doubtfully, and then he whispered, "Do you understand what you are doing? Have you heard the reputation of this man?"

The cook placed her hand over the kindly innkeeper's own and nodded at him, telling him that she understood what the risks were but that she had her reasons.

"For your help and for your concern, I thank you," the Cat told him. "And I am certain that you will have the gratitude of the man who secured me this place."

 _And of the order which he represents,_ she did not say, but she could tell by the subtle look of relief on Staaviros' face, she did not need to.

"And besides," the girl told the innkeeper jovially, "you'll be able to get your old cook back now."

"Mattine, you have a place here if ever you have need of it," Staaviros told her, squeezing her shoulder once before he dropped his hand and walked toward the door. "I'll go let Lord Atius know you will be joining his household after the service has ended tonight."

Mattine smiled at him as he departed, and it was a pretty smile, full of warmth and gratitude and the excitement at the possibilities of taking a position in a wealthy man's household held. The smile was a lie. Inside, the wheels of her mind were turning, cranking out a plan that would satisfy the real Mattine's requirements as well as bring her home as quickly and as safely as possible. As the plan took shape in her mind, her smile took on a different look. It was full of malice and all the coldness she could muster from within the heart that beat beneath the false, olive breast. She recalled her lesson with the waif not so long ago, when she had bottled the Tears of Lys despite her many distractions. What was it that the tiny master had said to her? _Do you want to be the Faceless Man renown for rendering men's bowels to water?_ The apprentice tapped her fingers over her lips thoughtfully.

Now, which step was it that she had nearly bungled and that would have caused her deadly poison to become merely a source of dysentery and colic?

* * *

 _ **Sunday Bloody**_ _**Sunday**_ -U2

 _ **Silver Lining**_ **-** Lee DeWyze

 _ **Pumped Up Kicks**_ -Foster the People (watch out, wealthy man)


	35. Chapter 35

Syrio was angry with her. He had heard that she was leaving the inn for the household of Atius Biro, a man the boy had very recently tried to kill; his father; the person he believed responsible for the death of his mother and more just like her. When she looked at the young pot boy and smiled, he returned a frown, and even _that_ was only when he bothered to make eye contact with her at all. Of everyone in the inn, little Syrio was the easiest to read and just now, he was _blaring_ his hurt and disappointment in his posture and behavior. The Cat finally cornered him in the kitchen after the supper, saying that she would have a proper goodbye, _not_ all this petulance and pouting.

"You're leaving me," the boy stated simply. His eyes were accusing and he folded his arms across his chest.

"Yes, but I don't want to. I _have_ to," the girl told him, her voice soothing, like the soft strains of a lullaby drifting down a corridor. Syrio had never been one for lullabies; he was like Arya in that way, and so her soft assurances and lilting tone did not comfort him.

"You _don't_ have to. You could stay here. With _me_ ," Syrio sulked, but then added with quiet urgency, "He's not a good man, Mattine. Having money doesn't make someone good."

The Cat felt sad that the little pot boy had learned such harsh lessons so early in his life. She wilted a little under his pleading gaze. The boy continued speaking in a soft whisper.

"He'll hurt you, just like he hurt my mother."

She walked toward the boy, seeing now that two great tears had formed in his eyes and threatened to tumble over his dark lashes and down his cheeks. His lip was puckered childishly as he fought to hold the tears back. He turned his luminous eyes with their harrowing depth of sadness upon the girl's face and then his chin began to quiver.

"Oh!" Mattine cried as she swept his small body into her arms, wrapping him up tightly as if to protect him from the pain of the world. He was so young to know such pain and loss. _He grieves his mother and wants revenge for her death. Now he's thinks I'll be harmed as well and he fears for me._ _At his age, I was playing come-into-my-castle with Sansa and Bran._

 _Sansa and Bran._ She drew in a great, ragged breath as she thought of them. _And Rickon and mother and father and Robb. Jon..._ How well she understood grief and loss and longing. Arya drew Syrio into her tighter, stroking his back gently as she had once done to a small, grey wolf pup. The girl held onto the little boy and began to wonder if she could save just this one... It was not her mission; it was not her mandate; it was not her directive from the Kindly Man or a prayer to the Many-Faced god that must be answered, but if she could soothe this boy's hurts and give him a small taste of justice, then maybe the fierce little girl who mourned constantly inside of her might find some peace; a tiny respite from her own great agony. Arya Stark had not been _Jaqen H'ghar's_ mission. She had not been part of _his_ mandate. No one had prayed to the Many-Faced god for her rescue, yet her master had killed for her and given her that iron coin anyway. She could do the same for Syrio. She could save him, and in doing so, maybe he could save her, too.

Jaqen had given her a form for her rage; direction and discipline that would make her hatred and anger more than just ineffectual wailing and ranting against all that had hurt her. Jaqen had filled part of her emptiness with _himself_. Perhaps then, helping Syrio could fill another portion of it. And then... _then she might be almost whole again._ Her heart clenched at the thought.

"He's a bad man, Mattine," the boy said, his voice muffled as his face pressed against the cook. She bent over him, placing her lips on the top of his head and giving him a small kiss there as if such a little thing could salve his wounds and relieve him of his fears. "He'll hurt you because he's a _bad man_."

"Not for long," the Cat whispered into his soft, dark curls, her voice sounding fierce as she recalled her vow to the boy. "Not for long."

Olive bustled into the kitchen just then and took in the scene before her. After a moment, she chastised Syrio for keeping both himself and the cook from their work as she piled an armload of dishes next to the sudsy tub the young boy should have been manning. Mattine patted Syrio on the back and then released him so he could finish his duties.

"It seems you've traded up," the tavern wench said to her friend as she wiped her hands on her apron. She said it in a matter-of-fact way and her voice did not sound friendly. There was a hint of judgment in Olive's tone.

"How's that?" the cook inquired.

"I'm sure your handsome man is rich enough for a merchant, but _Atius Biro_... my, what an improvement _that_ position will be over your duties here! His wealth is second only to the Sealord's and they say even Lord Atius' _servants_ have servants!"

"He made it very plain that he would not let me be until I came to work for him. He must have great need of a cook. It was only after he ate my lamprey pie that he even took notice of me. I'm sure he just wants more of the same."

"He took notice of you after you rushed out to rescue Syrio from that awful guard of his and he laid his covetous eyes upon your pretty face," Olive countered. "He may have _great need_ of a cook, but it's not your _cooking_ that he's after. But as for _more of the same_... _That_ may very well be."

Mattine turned her doe eyes to the serving girl's face, looking for her meaning. Once again, it seemed that Olive knew more than she was letting on. Mistaking the Cat's searching of her features for a question, Olive provided her the answer she believed was being sought.

"He said quite clearly for all to hear that your sister worked for him and that her death was hard on the household. I'm sure he sees something of her in _you_."

Olive had the right of it, to be sure, but the Cat felt instinctively that there was more there behind those pretty curls and plump cheeks than just her own powers of observation and ability to put facts together to form an accurate picture. Olive knew more about this situation than she was admitting to. Did she know, as Staaviros did, that _Marco_ represented the House of Black and White? Did she suspect that _Mattine_ had been placed in the inn as part of some plot originating with the Faceless Men? If so, the wench ought to know to tread carefully. The existence of the order was far from a secret, but much of their dealings _were_ , and knowing of them could put the serving girl in a precarious position; s _peaking_ of them could put her in a deadly one.

The cook sought to assure her friend that she was not interested in acting as a substitute for her sister in Atius Biro's life _or_ in his bed. Her friend responded that in the household of a wealthy man with the sort of power this particular wealthy man wielded, what a _cook_ was interested in wasn't like to count for much. Mattine scoffed at Olive's assertion that the wealthy man could have any _romantic_ interest in her, trying to assuage her friend's fears. It was only partly a lie, as the term _romantic_ seemed too sedate and soft to describe Atius Biro's dealings with his lovers.

"I wouldn't waste my time with him, anyway," the cook told her friend dismissively. "He's old. He must be past fifty, and like to die soon."

_Very like to die soon._

"Not the rich ones like Atius Biro. They dry up and wrinkle and go on forever. This man will outlive all of us hard working girls, mark my words," the wench countered. "Like to die soon? The rich ones never seem to."

The Cat whispered, "But sometimes… sometimes they do."

As she said it, Arya was thinking of her father, her mother, her brothers, her aunt and even Rhaegar. All young, all wealthy, all vivid and electrifying in life, full of vigor and strength. She then thought of Atius Biro's fate; a fate she was charged with delivering. Olive believed the rich ones went on forever; that they never died. The young wolf knew better.

Olive, Syrio, and Mattine finished their work in silence but after the kitchen was put in order, Olive skipped off to refresh herself for her meeting with the Bear. The Cat encouraged the serving girl to take her time and make sure she was at her _very best_. The apprentice was hoping that this would give her enough time to confer with her brother before the wench arrived to give the large boy hooded glances and suggestive stares. After the buxom wench departed, the cook sent Syrio off to bed with a promise that she would visit him as soon as she could, and then bent to whisper conspiratorially in the boy's ear.

"There may come a time very soon when I have need of your help," she told him. "If that time comes, I will send someone for you. Can you be ready?"

The boy's eyes were alight with excitement at her words. He smiled at her and said he would be waiting for her messenger.

"I'll be ready!" he vowed.

Syrio departed the kitchen and left the cook alone. She turned immediately to her room and began gathering her meager belongings, stuffing them into the pack her brother had used to bring her the now-ruined _Bravo_ disguise. The young assassin considered the likelihood that her person would be searched before being allowed entry into Lord Atius' home and decided his guards would be great fools if they did not check her for weapons. The wealthy man's more recent paranoia was well-known and so reluctantly, she removed her blades, hiding them in the mattress of the cook's room by making a small slit on its underside and slipping the blades through the hole and into the straw. As she held the last blade, a small, thin thing meant specifically for throwing, she bit her lip. It had no hilt, just a sharp end and a dull end meant to be gripped with the fingers briefly before throwing. After a moment's consideration, she pulled the neck of her brown dress away from her body and used the sharp tip of the blade to separate the layers of her corset. She then slipped the weapon down into the makeshift pocket, just to the side of her right breast and adjacent to the long, hard length of one of the steel bones that gave the _contemptible contraption_ its shape. Having the blade on her made her feel less _naked._

No sooner had she finished her task than a pebble flew through her window and bounced against the floor with a small _plonk_. The Cat left her leather pack on her bed and walked into the kitchen, quickly crossing the space to the door leading to the alley behind the inn. She found her brother lingering there, beneath her open window, awaiting her arrival. He was well-dressed and his hair looked... _nice._

"Did you have a _bath?_ " the Cat asked incredulously by way of greeting. "You smell... _clean_."

"So?" the Bear replied defensively. "I have to stay clean, or else my wound will get infected. The small master said so. And anyway, _you_ have baths all the time lately."

She recalled that the Bear had seen her slinking through the corridors of the temple swathed in a wet sheath very recently and her urge to laugh at him died suddenly.

"I need some things from the waif's workroom," she told him in a quiet voice. "Listen carefully."

She rattled off a list to her brother, naming the things she required in a whisper and made arrangements to meet him in the market in two days' time so that she might collect her requested items. The Bear nodded his understanding and then the Cat made him repeat the list back to her, just to be sure. When his sister was satisfied that the large acolyte would not forget anything she needed, she told him that Olive would be ready soon and he ought to go around the front of the inn to collect her. The boy grinned at the cook and she admonished him to _be nice_ to the wench. Confusion marred his face, as if he did not understand what other way he _could_ be. The girl began to wonder if there was an innocence that lurked behind her brother's brazen words and bold teasing. Well, if he had any innocence left in him, she felt certain that the wench would soon cure him of it. The large Lyseni boy left his sister and followed the alley to the street while she went back into the kitchen and bolted the door behind her.

The girl walked toward the cook's room but as she did, she noted the prickling feeling on her neck and arms that told her that she was not alone in the rear of the inn. Her steps slowed and she instinctively felt for the blade just inside of her sleeve, only to find her wrist bare. She cursed silently to herself and peered into the darkness of her small chamber, all black now that her candle had been snuffed. _Someone had snuffed her candle._

"Who were you talking with in the alley?" a man's gruff voice from within her chamber demanded in the common tongue. The voice was familiar to her but her mind was spinning as she tried unsuccessfully to place it.

"No common tongue," the girl spoke haltingly in the common tongue, a thick Braavosi accent marking her speech. "Braavosi only."

The Cat backed slowly away from the doorway of her room, past one of the candles in the kitchen which was throwing her long shadow to the edge of the gloom that started at her threshold. The girl was looking for anything she might use to defend herself. The knives had all been cleaned and put away but she was quick enough that it should not matter. The girl only needed to place herself near enough to them without raising the intruder's suspicion and she knew she would have access to a weapon should she have need of it. Not that kitchen knives made the _best_ weapons, but they would do in a pinch. And, there was always her delicate little throwing blade, now safely tucked inside of her corset, finally proving that such a horrid garment was good for more than just robbing women of their breath.

At the cook's accented words, the man snorted and moved toward her entryway, following her retreating form. As the intruder entered the kitchen, she was surprised to see that the personal guard of Atius Biro was staring back at her. The sellsword wore a scowl yet seemed unaccountably relaxed considering his tone of voice and the fact that he had come into her bed chamber unannounced. He leaned back against the wall to the side of her door frame and dropped his hand onto his sword hilt. The implied threat was not missed by the Cat. She wished she had her own sword, but the sharp blades had been left at the temple after she helped her brother home following the duel with Orbelo and his friends.

"I've come to collect you," the man told her in Braavosi, his tone seeming sarcastic as he over-annunciated each syllable. "Who were you talking to in the alley? I could hear voices, but they were whispering. Who would a cook be whispering with at this late hour in an alleyway?"

"I was making arrangements with the butcher for the morning's delivery," the girl lied smoothly. "I may not be the cook here any longer, but I've no wish to leave Staaviros in a bad way. It was my last duty."

The guard approached the cook slowly and she put her hand to her chest, as if in alarm. One finger hooked very slightly over the neckline of her dress, just grazing the top of her corset. The sellsword stopped uncomfortably close to the girl and had to bend down to place his face before hers so that he was looking into her eyes.

"You lie," he breathed in the common tongue. His dark eyes bored into the cook's own, holding her there with both his accusation and his menace. Mattine wrinkled her forehead, seeming to concentrate on his words but shaking her head in frustration, indicating her lack of understanding.

"Braavosi only," she insisted.

The tall man straightened and then dismissed her story, telling her in her preferred language, "Keep your secrets then, girl. But you should know, Atius Biro is a jealous man. He would not be happy to know you were flirting with a _butcher_ in a dark alley."

"Why would Lord Atius care who his _cook_ spoke to?" the girl asked innocently, the confusion on her face punctuated by the small wrinkle that persisted between her soft, brown eyes.

The guard smirked and shook his head as if telling her not to bother with her charade, though whether he meant the charade of Mattine feigning a lack of understanding as to her role in the wealthy man's household or if he meant the pretense that she was entering the household under the wealthy man's direction and not for her own purposes, the Cat found she could not determine. This bothered her greatly. First, Olive seemed to… _know things_. And now, this coarse sellsword was implying… _something._ It was imperative that she determine just _what_ he meant by his gesture, and soon. If he simply meant that he believed Mattine's supposed _innocence_ was a simple mummer's farce, well, that was just fine. It might even be to the apprentice's benefit, if she found she needed to play at seducing the guard for one reason or another. Believing Mattine was no better than whore would mean his suspicions would not be raised if she found herself in his bedchamber one evening (wearing her very special corset). However, if he meant that he suspected she had a sinister purpose for accepting the offered position, that would put him on his guard and make it much harder for her to do what needed doing. _That_ would have to be dealt with…

The girl moved her hand away from her neck and her hidden blade as the guard turned away and reentered her room, emerging a second later with her small pack. He asked if that was all she planned to take and when she said it was, he strode from the kitchen to the common room without a word. She followed close on his heels. The two passed Olive and the Bear, each with a tankard of ale, sitting together in the common room. Olive gave the cook a grim look as she swept past, trying to keep pace with the long-legged gait of the sellsword and the Bear raised his tankard to her in mock salute. She ignored them both and left the inn with Atius Biro's most trusted guard.

* * *

Nine priests and masters sat gathered in the council chambers, discussing the business of the order. The Lorathi flicked his eyes around the room, noting that three of his brothers were missing. One, he knew to be on the mission in Pentos that the principal elder had offered to Jaqen himself but which he had turned down in order to stay and finish his lovely girl's training. One brother was on a ship bound for White Harbor, a vessel known as _Merman's Fury,_ assuming it had not been sunk in a storm. The other absence, he could not account for, but he supposed his missing brother was performing some small duty for the order which kept him from the council chamber.

It was not unusual for masters to be out shadowing apprentices in order to observe their skills in action. Little Loric was supposed to be learning three new things, playing the part of a beggar around Ragman's Harbor once again, practicing stealth and memorizing all the streets and alleys and canals he might use to slip away from someone seeking to detain him. The large Lyseni boy was indulging in some dalliance or another, a folly that the Cat had dreamed up that was like to end in sorrow for someone. And, of course, there was the Cat herself, most likely enacting a plan to get her throat slit by one of the hundred household guards a wealthy man employed. She should have moved to the well-defended manse by now, and had probably been deposited directly into Atius Biro's bed already.

The Lorathi closed his eyes and drew in a deep, slow breath, pushing away his irritation with the girl's stubborn insistence that she knew how best to complete the task of carrying out Mattine's final wish. If she came through this distasteful circumstance unscathed, it would be a miracle and undeniable evidence of the Many-Faced god's extreme benevolence in answering a devout man's most fervent prayers.

_Arya Stark. Please do not take her from me._

"The cog pulled into port earlier this afternoon," the Lorathi's stout brother was saying as the principal elder nodded his understanding. "It is easily spotted by the colorfully haphazard patchwork of the mainsail, but also the name painted on the side. The vessel is still known as _The King's Fool_."

"So, Robert Stone is still master mummer of the troupe?" the principal elder inquired.

"Yes, it seems there has been little change among the band in these past ten years. A few new faces, certainly, but otherwise they remain the same," the fat fellow replied.

"Hmm," the elder mused. "Very well then. It seems that the Westerosi boy shall begin his trial first."

All the others nodded in agreement, seeing the wisdom and convenience of this decision. The principal elder placed his hand on Jaqen's forearm and spoke to him after a moment.

"Brother, I wish for you to take charge of this matter."

"The Westerosi boy's training has been most closely directed by a man's brother," the Lorathi protested mildly, looking around the table. The brother to whom Jaqen referred, the one who only appeared in the temple wearing a comely face, was one of the three absent from the meeting.

"Just so," the Kindly Man assented, "but he was given a mission that will unfortunately keep him occupied during this critical time, so it falls to you to take his place and ensure the Westerosi boy understands and undertakes his first task. Once he has earned his face, I will personally see to the completion of his trial and then he may take his vows."

"Very well, brother," the Lorathi conceded, bowing his head in deference to the elder. He wondered what errand the Westerosi's master had been sent to perform but understood that the principal elder did not wish to discuss it or else he would have mentioned it already. Normally, Jaqen would dismiss it from his mind, but with all that had happened of late within the walls of the temple, he couldn't help but feel disquieted by the unknown now. _Had his missing brother had anything to do with the near-drowning of his lovely girl?_

He tried to push this thought away too, as he had done earlier with his irritation at his apprentice. The Lorathi did not wish to accept that his brother had anything to do with the Cat's abduction and all that befell her afterwards. Yet, _someone_ had done it… Someone who was considered part of the order. _Four_ someones, as a matter of fact. If not this brother, then which?

The brother who wore a stern face most often spoke up and asked when his recruit was like to undergo _his_ trial. He was referring to the Lyseni boy who had been the Cat's sparring partner most recently. The serendipitous arrival of _The King's Fool_ in port had pressed the rat-faced Westerosi boy's case forward but it was decided that the Bear would be next in line. Waiting a bit longer would give his recently acquired wounds time to heal. As the Cat was currently engaged in a task for the order, the completion time of which could not be accurately predicted, it was determined that her trial would be the last of the three.

"The Acolyte's Feast will be the night before the Westerosi girl's trial begins," the waif announced. "I realize this is unusual, but as the girl is in Atius Biro's household now, waiting until her assignment is complete is the most sensible thing."

There was murmuring around the table and Jaqen watched the expressions of the other Faceless Men. Most remained mild and passive, as was their way. The stern brother, of course, looked _stern_. There was a murmured comment about the fact that an acolyte was sent forth on an assignment that might be long and drawn out so near to her trial. Another wondered when in the history of the order the Acolyte's Feast had ever been held mid-trial rather than pre-trial. Mostly though, his brothers (and sister) seemed unconcerned.

When all the business was concluded, the principal elder bowed his head and said, "Valar morghulis" in his quiet voice. He was met with a chorus of "Valar dohaeris" and the masters and priests stood up from their seats and drifted away in silence. As the Lorathi began to rise, his master placed his hand gently on the younger assassin's shoulder.

"Stay for a moment, brother," the elder requested. Jaqen nodded and took his seat once again. He waited for his master to speak.

The elder turned his gaze upon the Lorathi's face and gave him a kindly look before saying, "I know you have concerns about your apprentice in the household of this dead man. I would like to remind you that _all_ of the acolytes are of equal importance to the order."

Jaqen's expression remained impassive, but the words of the Kindly Man had startled him.

_How interesting that his master would lie to him about this._

"Just so," the Lorathi replied, expressionless, giving his master a small nod.

"So, despite your misgivings about the path your apprentice has chosen to complete her assignment, I hope that you will devote your attention to your brother's apprentice in preparation for his final trial, just as if he were your own recruit. I am certain that if your brother found himself in your shoes, he would devote himself without question to the Westerosi girl."

Did the Lorathi only imagine the glint in the elder's eye as he spoke?

"On this point, a man's master should rest his mind and be at ease," the assassin said. "All that is necessary will be done for this boy. A man will do his duty." His own words called up a recent memory.

 _I will do my duty, whatever is asked_ , he heard his lovely girl say.

The principal elder nodded slightly at the words of his former apprentice and then Jaqen added, "Worry is not for us, brother." One side of the Lorathi's mouth twisted fractionally upward.

"Indeed," the elder agreed, his small smile frozen on his face, not reaching his piercing eyes. "And the gods are not mocked."

It was Jaqen's turn to give a false smile. He bowed his head to his master in reverence and murmured, "Valar morghulis, brother."

"Valar dohaeris, brother," the elder returned coldly. "Now, go and serve."

* * *

The Cat-who-looked-like-Mattine expected to walk to the wealthy man's manse but was instead ushered by the sellsword-guard onto a posh gondola, replete with silken pillows and tufted cushions. These were mostly stuffed into the three-sided passengers' cabin and done in various colors, mostly rich jewel tones. Some were even delicately beaded with patterns of flowers and birds and fruits. The fabrics were costly and the work was lovely, if one cared for such niceties. The _needlework_ the girl preferred was of a different sort, however, and so she tossed the pillows carelessly to the floor of the boat, making room for herself on the long bench meant for passengers. The bench stretched the length of the back of the cabin, a space that was all gilded trimmings and floating, sheer curtains blowing gently over the open portholes on each side of the seat. There was even a thick, velvet drapery of gold and red to pull across the open front of the canopied alcove to protect the riders' privacy. The girl shuddered to think of what Atius Biro did with such privacy, and on the very cushions upon which she now sat...

Looking away from the reds and golds and sapphire blues of the ostentatious cabin to distract herself from her own distasteful thoughts, the apprentice's eyes cast back toward the inn from which she had just come and she saw a familiar tortoise-shell patterned feline prancing along the cobblestoned lane toward the Moon Pool. _Give the Bravos my regards, Ser Tom_ , the girl thought wryly as the barge began to move through the dark, watery lane of the canal.

Mattine and the guard were the only passengers. The other five men aboard were the crew; oarsmen and a head gondolier who pulled the long boat through the canal while standing and poling in time with one another, navigating the dark, interconnected waterways expertly. Two large lamps hung from hooks at the ends of the elaborately carved and gilded poles standing at the forefront and aft of the vessel. The flames threw a little light along their path but at the speed at which they were travelling, the Cat wasn't sure how much good it did the oarsmen. They just seemed to know their way very well. Their oars were laid alongside them, inside of the boat, and the girl wasn't sure why they were needed, as the canal was too narrow to put them to use if there was any traffic upon the water travelling in the opposite direction. Besides, the poles seemed to be working just fine. Her question was soon answered, though, as the barge passed under the last of the stone bridges arching over the canal before they hit the protected waters of the Purple Harbor.

As the men seated themselves, taking up their oars and dipping them into the slowly undulating waves of the bay, they began pulling the beautifully appointed barge through the darkness of the harbor at speed. It was then that the importance of the lamps burning brightly on the bow and stern of the boat became obvious to the Cat. But for the light they were throwing, their small boat might go unnoticed in this busy waterway full of much larger vessels. Even with the light, the men kept a watchful eye as they moved toward the large manse that sat on the very edge of the curving spit of land that defined the easternmost boundary of the Purple Harbor. The Cat could see the lights of the manse burning in the distance, on the extreme northeastern edge of Braavos. She noted that the wealthy man's house commanded a perfect view of the Purple harbor and the Drowned Town to the west, the open waters to the east, the Sealord's palace to the south, and to the north, the desolate and rocky outcropping that formed part of the protective ring around Braavos, creating its unique and hidden harbor.

The guard began to talk to the girl as the boat drew closer to the manse, telling her that it was much faster to travel by boat to and from the manse due to its remote location. The Cat watched as one of the oarsmen, the man who gave the orders, took a lamp from its hook on the pole at the bow of the boat and waved it in a pattern. Back and forth following the horizon once, then up and down, up and down. Then once more across the horizon, this time only from right to left. He then replaced the lamp and helped steer the boat into a lane formed by two rocky jetties projecting from the high walls of the wealthy man's house. At the end of this lane, built into the outer wall surrounding the manse, was an iron gate, made of thick, crossed bars of rusted iron, which extended into the water. The gate blocked the passage of boats, men, and all but the fish small enough to pass through the cross-hatched, heavy bars.

"How far down does the gate go?" Mattine asked, trying to sound interested but not as if she might be plotting an escape route. _Which she was, of course._

"All the way to the muddy bottom," the guard replied dismissively, his Braavosi marred by his Westerosi accent.

 _No escape this way if the gate is closed; I cannot swim under it,_ the girl realized with disappointment _._

Despite having given the signal, the gate was not lifted until the boat was close enough to the wall for the guards standing watch atop it to inspect the gondola. Once they had satisfied themselves that it was indeed Atius Biro's own vessel and that the men crewing it his own servants, the iron bars were lifted and the barge floated beneath the rusted gate and into a beautiful water garden on the other side of the wall. The Cat did not turn to watch as the gate was lowered but the cranking sounds of the chains which moved the monstrous thing echoed off of the walls around her, giving her the unmistakable feel of being locked away in a dungeon.

The gondola was poled up to a short pier and docked there, the crew tying the vessel securely as the guard hopped from the boat onto the wooden walkway. He turned to help the new arrival, taking first her pack and then her hand as he steadied her and pulled her from the barge. His grip was tight on her arm as she stepped onto the pier and he looked hard at her, his eyes piercing hers as if he was waiting for the girl to say something or do something. The Cat at first thought he would not let her go. But then he did and bade her to follow him.

The girl scrambled after the guard, not understanding his behavior. As they crossed the garden, following a stone path that winded through formal beds of ruffled flowers and blooming shrubs, and then entered an almost orchard-like area thick with fruit trees, the Cat stared at the back of the guard's head, focusing on his close-cropped hair and the roughened skin of his neck, brown from the sun.

 _What are you about?_ she wondered.

Several thoughts fluttered through her mind all at once and a voice, not the gruff voice of the guard, but a voice that seemed somehow familiar to her, was saying _something_. She latched onto the bits she could, trying to put a puzzle together with only a few random pieces available to her. _…_ _doesn't know me,_ she heard, and then another voice saying, _she has a task._ The words came from a mouth that sat below a pair of fathomless blue eyes that seemed as cold as the wind that blew down from the Frostfangs. The image was fleeting and blurry and she couldn't make much sense of it. She then saw Mattine, and heard the Braavosi girl's voice forming the Cat's own words, cursing as she ran to a fallen figure, calling out and asking if he was alright. _The Bear_. This was the aftermath of the duel she and her brother had fought with the _Bravos_. The only reason she would be seeing these images in the guard's head was if…

… _he had been there. The guard was the mysterious man in the alley near the Moon Pool._

 _A man felt that,_ she recalled Jaqen saying in a whisper. Her realization was too late. _Jaqen had known she had reached into his head. This man might, too._

In an instant, the girl had plucked her small throwing blade from her corset and lunged at the guard from behind. He was alerted to her suspicion just in time, having felt her once before caressing his mind and recognizing the sensation once again. He spun around and grabbed her slashing arm just before she opened his throat with her wickedly sharp steel. The sellsword wrapped his other arm around her neck and firmly pressed against her windpipe as he covered her mouth with his hand, dragging her off the path and into the deeper shadows of the grove. The girl struggled against his grip, managing a sharp kick against his knee, which almost sent him tumbling to the ground, but he recovered. She cursed Mattine's stupid, soft slippers. Had she been wearing proper boots…

" _Valar morghulis,_ " the guard hissed in her ear and she froze, her struggles forgotten. As the Cat settled down, the sellsword withdrew his hand from her mouth.

"You're _Faceless_?" she whispered angrily, but then, it all made sense. Of course the guard was a Faceless Man. He hadn't always been, but at some point after the offer of employment for Mattine had been made, the true guard had been replaced with an assassin; one made to resemble the weathered sellsword _perfectly._ The Cat wondered briefly what had become of the actual guard but then was distracted by her annoyance at what the presence of a Faceless master here in the manse with her meant. So, the order had sent a nursemaid for her, the girl realized with growing consternation. A more experienced killer to make sure she was up to the task she was assigned.

 _She has a task,_ she had heard in the master's head.

It was positively _insulting_. But it _did_ explain how a broken down old sellsword suddenly became such a bloody _menace._

"As I said before, my brother is most worried about you, little wolf."

His words echoed in her head and she recalled the first time she had heard them. He had come to take Mattine's body before the apprentice could feed the self-sacrificing sister to the eels. He did it so that he might salvage her face. Had he known how quickly that face would be used?

The Cat still did not know which brother this master meant, but she at least knew who she was dealing with. _The handsome man._

"What are you doing here? Are you just going to watch me from a distance, like you did the other night?"

"So, you knew I was there," the master remarked in the sellsword's voice.

"I knew _someone_ was there," she corrected. "I didn't know that it was _you_ until just a minute ago."

The master leaned in very close to the apprentice and locked his gaze upon her, staring with fascination into her false eyes and saying, "So, it's true, then. You really can read men's thoughts. I wasn't sure I believed that's what it was until I felt the same feeling I had in the alley. It was a little softer this time, though. If I hadn't known better, I would have just ignored it."

She stared at him, not knowing what to say; wondering if perhaps she had already said too much. This wasn't her telling anyone about her wolf dreams, which her master had warned her against, but she imagined it was just as bad, and if he had been here, Jaqen would have told her to keep her mouth shut. It would have made no difference, however. The handsome man behind the guard's face continued talking.

"I would not have known what was happening, had I not been informed that you likely possessed this… _ability_."

"Informed? By whom? Who told you?" the Cat demanded. As far as she knew, only she and Jaqen were aware of what she could do, and they had only just learned themselves.

The Faceless guard pulled back from her, ignoring her question and warning her to stay out of his head. He reminded her that he would know if she didn't. The assassin knew what she _felt like_ now.

"Is one hovering master not enough for me? How have I somehow managed to be assigned _two_?" the apprentice inquired, vexed.

"You are here for a reason. I am here for a different reason," he told her. "I cannot help you in your task. This assignment is yours to perform as you see fit, following the guidelines given to you."

She nodded her understanding, but then gave the master a warning of her own.

"I know you are Biro's taster, but if I were you, I would try to avoid his tea and wine as much as possible."

The guard cocked an eyebrow at her, but said nothing. The girl replaced her knife in the pocket she had created in her corset, turning away from the disguised assassin as she did, and then picked up her pack from the ground where the man had dropped it during their struggle.

"Lead me to my quarters, then," the girl said with a sly wink. "I can't wait to get started in my new position."

* * *

 _ **So Easily**_ Katherine Calder (poor Syrio-someday he'll understand)

 _ **Blurry**_ **-** Puddle of Mudd (I wonder what you're doing...)

 _ **Little Things-**_ Bush (it's the _little things_ that kill...)


	36. Chapter 36

_A cupbearer_.

The position made her feel half a child again. It was a simple job, really, and one the apprentice had performed before (and performed _well_ , if she could be so bold as to say it. She had never given Roose Bolton cause for complaint, anyway, and _this_ time the work did not seem to involve any _leeches_ as far as she could tell.) It was easier work than cooking and it gave her at least as much access to Atius Biro _and_ his meals, which was the best thing she could have hoped for. It was as if the Many-Faced god had finally chosen to smile down upon the Cat and bless her with all the good fortune it was within his power to bestow.

Of course, being in such close contact with the wealthy man meant she had to spend much more time and effort designing creative ways to dodge his advances. She supposed she could just give in to them. It would certainly be easier, but there was something in the girl that recoiled strongly against this notion. She worried that if she attempted to employ the tactic, she would surely end up stabbing the wealthy man through his eye before she could stop herself. The Kindly Man was not like to thank her for _that._

The idea of having a (supposedly) well-trained cook acting as a cupbearer was, of course, ridiculous, and the girl did not doubt that Lord Atius' wife and the other servants immediately saw through the ploy, especially once they got a good look at her face and realized how closely it resembled another face; one familiar to them; the face of a different well-loved ( _and_ well-hated, at least by some) servant. However, _Mattine_ was at her most charming when giving the appearance of being innocent and naïve and so she drifted through the manse seemingly unaware of the wealthy man's desires. She managed to use her grief as a shield in those first few days serving her new master, calling up tears and whispering _Hellind_ whenever it seemed that Lord Atius was close to suggesting something improper. The cupbearer needed to obtain the supplies that her brother was gathering for her from the waif's stores in order to let _nature_ and the _frailties of man_ substitute for the shield her grief now provided. She would need to initiate her plan soon, or she feared her new master would become too impatient and force his hand.

_Then she really would have to stab him through his eye._

The other servants seemed to mostly avoid her and she really couldn't blame them. She supposed they had learned over time not to grow too fond of their lord's paramours for they were not like to be around long. And the Cat had learned over her life that people tended to revile the dying; it was an outward expression of the fear of their own mortality, she supposed. The indifference of the other servants actually made things easier for her, however. The Cat was an accomplished liar, but being relieved of the requirement to employ social graces and lie routinely to so many people was certainly less taxing. Those energies could be better spent elsewhere. _For instance, in learning the patterns and habits of Lord Atius, his wife, and his children, as well as his household guards._

By mid-afternoon on the Cat's second day serving as cupbearer to Lord Atius, the girl could feel the wealthy man's gaze upon Mattine's form as she moved to fetch a pitcher of wine to refill her new master's glass. She had already feigned tears earlier that morning and it had put the man off of her for a bit, but all too soon, the dead man was lusting after the grieving sister once again. There was simply too much of Hellind in her figure and her face. Lord Atius did not seem capable of ignoring his desire for very long.

 _Honestly, he would have been better served praying for the death of his wife and keeping his servant with the way he's mooning over Mattine,_ the girl thought. The wealthy man was easier to read than even little Syrio. His regret at losing Hellind, his lust for Mattine, and his impatience to claim what he felt was _his_ was written plainly across his face.

 _Disgusting pig,_ the apprentice thought as Biro's eyes predictably raked over her. She employed a gentle sway of her hips when she walked. This drew attention to Mattine's curves in the obscenely revealing gown she had been given to wear while serving the wealthy man. The thing was loose and flowing, and though it had a ribbon at the neck that could be tied in such a way as to draw the front up very high, it left her back completely bare and her arms exposed all the way from her shoulders to her fingers. It was scarcely more decent than a certain sleeping gown a Pentoshi widow had once worn, and even then, she'd at least had a robe to cover it!

"My dear, you are so like your sister," the dead man gasped, then quickly added, "may she be at peace in the Nightlands."

Mattine dipped her head demurely then lifted her large eyes to her new master, gazing at him from under her thick fringe of lashes as she replied with just a hint of sadness, "Thank you, my lord. I consider that a very great compliment. My sister was always admired for her beauty."

"Indeed!" Lord Atius agreed enthusiastically. "Indeed, she was!"

The girl drifted across the floor of her master's solar toward him, reaching him just as he pushed himself back in his chair to admire her movements. As she bent to pour his wine, the lusty lord leaned forward, causing her bare shoulder to just brush against the wealthy man's chest.

"Oh, excuse me, my lord!" the girl chirped, leaping back gracefully. "I beg your pardon."

"No, no," the man said and though his words were meant to dismiss her concerns, he sounded very _hungry._ "It was entirely _my_ fault, my dear. Entirely." As he spoke, he inhaled deeply, visibly savoring her scent. The Cat had discovered which perfumed oils Hellind had used most often to scent her hair and had dabbed just a bit in Mattine's own curls. Enough to be reminiscent, but not enough to be overpowering. Lord Atius closed his eyes and slumped heavily against the high back of his chair.

"My lord," the cupbearer began hesitantly, awaiting the wealthy man's permission to continue speaking.

"What is it, my dear?"

"Well, my lord, I was just speaking with the cook…"

"Mattine, I really have no need of a another cook. As I have told you, it is a cupbearer I need. I must insist that you not try me any further in the matter."

"No, my lord. I won't. It's just that I was telling the cook how much you liked my lamprey pie. At the inn…" she said by way of reminding him. "And _she_ asked if she might have my recipe, so that she could make it for you, just the way you like it."

"Ah."

"Of course, I said she could, but there was one ingredient that she was unfamiliar with," the cupbearer explained. "It was something she said she had never used in lamprey pie before. Well, _of course_ that's why Lord Atius prefers mine to yours, I told her."

"Yes, I see."

"Well, it's an ingredient whose quality must be assessed closely in the market. I'm very choosy with my ingredients, my lord," the girl told him, placing a hand at her hip, gathering the soft layers of the draping cloth of her gown and pressing them against her skin, defining the alluring curve of her waist.

"I'm sure you are, Mattine," the wealthy man replied, and he seemed a tiny bit breathless.

"A poor quality ingredient will simply ruin a dish!" the former cook declared. "Well, I thought perhaps I should accompany the cook to the market today, just to show her how to assess this ingredient for its suitability for this dish."

"You wish to go to the market today?"

"Yes, my lord," the girl said, dropping her gaze to the floor but then once again lifting her eyes and settling them on his face from beneath her lashes. _He seemed to like that. It must have been something Hellind did a lot._

"Very well, my dear," Lord Atius allowed, succumbing to all of Mattine's subtle enticements, none of which had to do with his preference for her lamprey pie recipe. "You shall take my gondola. And my guard."

"Oh, my lord!" the girl gasped in delight, her laughter tinkling delicately throughout the room. "You are _too kind_."

" _Owen!"_ the wealthy man bellowed as he grinned under the weight of the compliment of the young woman. Almost instantly, the Faceless guard threw open the door to the solar and stepped in.

"My lord?" he asked, not looking at the Cat.

"My cupbearer must go to the market today. Take the gondola and ferry her there."

"My lord… the cook?" the girl asked meekly.

The lord fished for his purse of silver, patting his pockets until he located it. He placed it in the girl's hands, holding them rather longer than was necessary for the simple passing of a purse but Mattine managed to blush prettily at his touch rather than vomit on him. That the blush was more of a flush called up out of her anger at Lord Atius' presumption was not immediately apparent, the Cat was gratified to note.

"Do not worry the cook, she is likely deep into her duties. Buy some high quality and low quality ingredient. You may teach her the difference in her kitchen, when she is free."

"Oh, my lord, you are wise as well as kind," the girl gushed and then turned to leave with _Owen._

"Perhaps you would like to buy a small treat for yourself," the lord offered grandly, earning an adoring gaze and delighted smile from his new cupbearer before she left with his personal guard. The wealthy man felt very satisfied with himself as the girl nearly skipped away, certain that bringing her into his household had been one of his best ideas yet. She was _so_ like Hellind, yet younger, and more innocent. _Just delightful._

As the door to the solar closed behind them and the two assassins made their way through the corridors of the manse, the cupbearer's _delightful smile_ melted away and her mouth settled into a grimace. Puffing up this vain and lascivious lord's ego was distasteful to the Cat though she understood that with the restrictions that were placed on her for this assignment, it was unfortunately necessary. She recalled one of the first conversations she had with Jaqen when he returned from Westeros. He had wanted to know if she had learned to flatter men and charm them out of their secrets.

 _I still find it much easier to learn a man's secrets by holding a blade to his throat than by charming him,_ she had told her master then. And though she had perhaps underestimated her own skill at manipulating men, it was still true that she preferred a more _aggressive_ method of getting what she needed. At least in _this_ situation, it would make her feel less... _filthy_. She had the sudden urge to scrub the shoulder the wealthy man had touched when she had poured his wine.

"You might be overdoing it a bit," the Faceless sellsword warned the apprentice cupbearer as they trekked through the garden, bound for Lord Atius' gondola.

" _Overdone_ is this red and gold floating whorehouse we're taking to the market," the Cat spat, waving her hand in the direction of the moored vessel. "What _I'm_ doing, he's eating up. He's like a bear with honey. It will never be too sweet for him."

"Yes, a bear. Just so," the master agreed. "And like a bear, he has giant paws between which he can crush your skull. Never forget that, little wolf."

"Honestly, _Owen,_ do you and Jaqen just sit around in your spare time and dream up dire warnings to give me? How much of a fool do you think I am that you think I need to be warned about _Atius Biro_? I could slaughter that man in my sleep."

"Indeed, but sadly, your task is not to _slaughter a wealthy man in your sleep._ It is, rather, to give him a natural appearing death while at the same time ruining his reputation. Also, I am fairly certain your master commanded you to return to him _unharmed._ "

The Cat rolled her eyes in a most disrespectful manner but the handsome man was not provoked. He seemed even less prone to temper than Jaqen, which was in itself an amazing feat. _Of course, he hadn't spent nearly as much time with her as the Lorathi assassin had. Given time, he too might find the veneer of his calm wearing thin._

Soon, the cupbearer and the sellsword were underway in Lord Atius' barge, the crew moving in silence. Both of the Faceless assassins sat in the passengers' cabin, not looking at one another, but occasionally making comments under their breath.

"I would not recommend tempting Lord Atius too much, _Mattine._ A clever girl would know that he is a man of _large appetites_ and does not require much enticement."

"I will take your warning under advisement," the girl replied softly and with obvious insincerity. "I am certain that as a guard in his employ for all of a few days, you must know _exactly_ how much enticement this man requires."

The handsome man was not deterred from offering his lecture to the girl despite her less than gracious attitude.

"I fear that if you press the matter, you will find yourself unable to resist his advances," the guard continued. "At least not without giving yourself away. Or violating the terms of the contract."

"I find it interesting that you would deign to care if I was able to resist his advances or not, as long as I accomplished my mission," the Cat remarked lightly as she stared through the sheer curtain over the porthole nearest to her. The sunlight created bright bits of dancing flame on the rolling waves that hurt her eyes if she looked at them too long.

"Me? Oh, child, I don't care. But my brother…"

"You have several brothers," the apprentice reminded the master as she turned her gaze onto a large mound of expensive pillows piled on the floor between the handsome man's feet and her own. "Which one do you mean?"

The sellsword smirked and turned his head away from her, making no answer.

"I thought you weren't supposed to help me with my task," the girl hissed, her comment pointed. _I know what I'm doing._

"Just so," the man replied simply and grew silent once more.

As they approached the canal which ran alongside the market, the vessel slowed and the Faceless master asked the Cat why she really wanted to visit the market, since he knew it wasn't for some unusual ingredient for lamprey pie. It was then _her_ turn to smirk and make no answer.

It was high tide and the risen waters of the canal pushed the barge up enough that it was nearly at the same elevation as the lane that ran along the canal, separating the waterway from the market. One of the crew tied the bow of the gondola to a post driven into the grassy bank and as the rest of the oarsmen worked to secure the boat, the cupbearer leapt from the vessel and onto the flat part of the bank. In two steps, her feet were on the cobblestones of the lane.

Not waiting for her Faceless nursemaid, the Cat flew along the lane with the nearly sheer layers of her cream colored skirts fluttering around her legs. She did not fool herself into thinking that she could actually lose her chaperone in the crowd, but neither did she have to make it easy for him to follow her. He was not to help her with _her_ task for the order and so she did not feel obligated to help him with _his_ task for Lord Atius. _The task of keeping an eye on me so that Mattine remains untouched for a dead man,_ the apprentice thought with disgust.

Mattine tried to ignore the stares she was getting from the men and women passing her on the lane, looks that trumpeted a mix of disapproval _and_ appreciation of her bared flesh. Instead, she concentrated on the feel of the warm sun on her exposed shoulders and back. It was a pleasant sensation and one she did not often experience.

 _They don't know me,_ she thought as she passed the gaping and interested faces of those walking to and from the market. _They don't matter. Only the mission matters._ Then, perhaps a bit arrogantly, _Man cannot judge Death._

The Cat was bound for the place she had agreed to meet her brother; the stall of a certain fruit seller that specialized in candied figs. She hoped that the Bear had found everything she needed, elsewise she would need to feign an illness to escape the dead man's clutches soon. As she approached the candied fruit seller's stall, she saw a large figure leaning casually against one of the low stone walls that defined the boundaries of the stall and enclosed the seller's goods. When her brother saw her approaching, he grinned.

"I thought you were going to live in Atius Biro's manse, not a brothel," the boy laughed, raising the pack he had brought from the temple, filled with the items she required from the waif's workshop.

"Shut up, stupid. He makes me wear this," the Cat growled, taking the pack and lifting the flap to inspect the contents briefly. Finding it all in order, she closed it back up.

"Why don't you ever wear anything like that around the temple?" the Lyseni teased her, taking the pack from her so that she would not have the burden of carrying it as they strolled through the market together.

"Because the last time I tried to change my clothes in front of you, you nearly died of fright," she shot back. "What has you in such a jesting mood?"

"Oh, nothing," the boy sighed. "I'm just in love."

* * *

Jaqen found himself surprised by the arrogance of the Westerosi boy. It was an odd trait for an acolyte with so many years of training. _Such a flaw should have been beaten out of the boy by now._ The Lorathi was doing his best to follow the instructions of the principal elder and help the boy prepare for his upcoming trial but the Westerosi seemed resistant to everything the master tried to teach him. This was particularly frustrating for a man who would rather be searching for answers as to who within the temple walls was plotting against his own apprentice. As _equally important_ as the principal elder insisted this acolyte was, Jaqen's time was also valuable and it vexed him to feel it was being wasted with someone who seemed to resent his instruction.

"Perhaps a boy would rather be training with a man's sister, honing his skills with poisons?" the Lorathi suggested in an irritated tone as he disarmed the boy once again. The training sword that Jaqen had easily knocked out of the boy's hand clattered noisily on the stones of the floor, setting the master assassin's teeth on edge. It was at least the tenth time it had happened and they had not been sparring that long. The Westerosi was being lazy with his defense and his rat-face wore a distinctly _bored_ expression.

"I've been studying those same poisons since I was almost too young to understand what poison was. I really don't think more lessons would be very beneficial now," the acolyte nearly yawned, speaking in the common tongue.

"Languages, then?" the Lorathi returned in convincing Dothraki. It was not hard to imagine him horseback with an arakh at his narrow hip, riding alongside of some Khal, a dark, oiled braid swaying behind him, accompanied by the soft tinkling of bells.

"Who would pay a Faceless Man to assassinate some savage horselord?" the boy sneered, first attempting the rebuff in broken Dothraki but then switching to the common tongue to make his point. He did not have the same gift for languages as the Cat.

"Perhaps a boy should tell a man what skills he wishes to practice since his time grows _so short_ ," Jaqen said quietly, and the undertone of a threat was present in his voice. The boy did not heed it and continued to answer in his flippant and disrespectful way. The Westerosi perhaps did not realize how close to danger he was dancing, having not spent much time with the Lorathi before. In fact, it was just this truth that he chose to harp on next, in his grating way.

"I don't know why you are suddenly so interested in me anyway. It seems you have been too busy with my _sister_ of late to care much about anything else," the boy said with an insolence that was hard to ignore. The way he said _sister_ , though, made it seem as if the word tasted foul in his mouth.

Jaqen dropped his thumb and hooked it into his swordbelt. He then raised his eyebrows, giving the impression of mere casual interest in the boy's words.

"Just so," the Lorathi admitted. "A man has spent much time training his apprentice, and as trying as she can sometimes be, she always appreciates the time and effort spent on teaching these lessons."

"Oh, I'm sure she _appreciates_ it very much," the boy muttered, "when she takes the time to get off of her back and out of your bed."

Jaqen struck with all the quickness of an angry viper. The Westerosi boy found himself flat on _his_ back, his skull bouncing painfully off the stone floor of the training room. The Lorathi assassin loomed over the insolent acolyte, standing as he straddled the thin boy's torso, looking down at him with an impassive expression. In those bronze eyes, though, the simmering hostility was unmistakable for anyone who dared to make a study of them.

"A boy should keep a civil tongue in his head, and his wits about him. Failure to do either can have..." here, the Lorathi paused to consider the proper terminology then finished with, " _unpleasant_ consequences."

Jaqen had spoken evenly, almost quietly, but his meaning was clear. He offered a hand to the rat-faced boy and pulled him to stand. The boy was lean and tall, but not as tall as the master standing before him, so he had to look up slightly to meet the Lorathi's eyes. When he did so, he seemed to be choosing his words carefully. He might have been better served by holding his tongue, but that had never been the acolyte's way.

"I have trouble understanding what it is about Arya Stark that everyone in this place seems to find so _bloody special_."

A small smile fought to show itself and ruin the effect of the Lorathi's mild expression. He cocked his head and looked at the acolyte for a moment before saying, "There is no _Arya Stark_. Arya Stark is dead."

"Humph," the boy responded, walking to the racks on the wall to replace his tourney sword. He had obviously decided that his sparring session with the Faceless master was over. The Westerosi's voice was faint as he skulked across the room, yet Jaqen still heard his damning utterance.

"Arya Stark is _not_ dead, but she _should_ be."

The Lorathi assassin's relaxed posture instantly tensed and he felt for all the world as if he had been struck by a bolt of lightning. Several thoughts came at him in a rush, slamming together in his head and causing the truth to crystallize and harden into its sudden and definable form. All at once, Jaqen understood and he pushed a slow breath out through his lips and closed his eyes for a small moment as he let the realization seep through him.

_He had just discovered the first of the four conspirators in the plot against his lovely girl._

In three long strides, the assassin had closed the gap between himself and the surprised Westerosi boy, pushing him against the cool stone of the wall next to the weapons rack in which the boy had only just replaced his blunted sword. The acolyte's head once again made a satisfying _cracking_ sound as it met yet another hard surface and he expelled a pained grunting noise as it did.

There was an elegance to the Lorathi's quiet intimidation; a reserve in his malice that seemed to hint at the much larger store of danger that lurked just below his placid surface. Had his apprentice been there to witness it (rather than trading barbs with her love-struck brother in the Braavosi marketplace just then), she would have reveled in every nuance and detail of her master's actions and expression and tone. She would have studied his manner and his movements with an attention that bordered on hunger while at the same time admiring his understated ruthlessness. She would have tucked the lesson away to use later, for she surely would have need of it in the future. She would have placed it with the other things she kept safe and secure in her mind, locked away in the special little box she used to hold all of the things that fit into the category of _how to be more like Jaqen._

The long fingers of Jaqen's right hand curved almost gently around the boy's scrawny neck as the fingers of his left hand tapped slowly against the silver hilt of the dagger he wore in his belt. He stared into the boy's dark, beady eyes for a few moments, letting the acolyte's fear slowly awaken as his mind cleared itself of the fog that had risen when his head struck the floor and then the wall. When the master saw a change in the boy's eyes, the slight widening accompanied by a dilation of his pupils, he put the question to the boy that he most wanted answered just then.

"Whose orders?" the Lorathi asked softly. His face remained impassive, his tone almost unconcerned, but those bronze eyes... The anger contained in them had gone from simmering hostility to bubbling rage with the rat-faced boy's words about Arya Stark. When the acolyte made no answer, Jaqen tightened his grip on the boy's throat ever so slightly and spoke again in his cold, quiet voice. "Do not test a man on this, boy."

The Westerosi apprentice's breath hitched just a bit before he set his face with grim determination. After a moment, the boy's hard mouth curled itself into a new expression and he gave the master an ugly grin, saying, "If you don't already know the answer, then you're not so clever after all."

* * *

"I'm no expert," the Cat was saying as she strolled at a leisurely pace with her brother through the market, "but I don't think you can be in love after spending a few hours with someone."

Truth be told, the girl was dubious about the actual existence of _love_ anyway, at least as it related to the feelings that existed between men and women. She believed her parents had loved her and she knew that she loved them as well. She loved her brothers (and even _Sansa_ , though her sister had not made it easy for Arya to love her), but that was a different sort of love than what the Bear was talking about. At least, when she thought of how she loved her family, she never sighed or grinned like a fool or turned four shades of red as he had just done. Every account of romantic love that she had witnessed or knew of seemed to end in tragedy. This, to her, provided ample proof of how _unnatural_ a state it was—even _fate_ conspired against lovers. Indulging in love seemed only to lead to destruction. To hear tell of her eldest brother's murder, it was his love of his Westerling wife that was at the heart of the quarrel that led Walder Frey to engage in his nefarious plot. Her mother and father had appeared to love one another greatly but their love had not saved them and they both met their ends horribly, violently, and before their due time. Sansa had thought she loved that odious worm, Joffrey but from the few tales Arya had managed to pull out of the Hound before he expired, that love had morphed into an ugly and tortuous thing. Lyanna and Rhaegar's love not only led to their own ruin, but also to great losses for the Stark family, the downfall of the Targaryen dynasty, and, one could even argue, the destruction of the realm.

The acolyte disguised as Mattine sighed, thinking that even here in Braavos, love seemed to be a thing of danger and ruin. She considered that Atius Biro might have believed himself in love with his paramours, the mothers of his bastards, yet each time it had ended in grief or tragedy for them. Love was a weakness that an assassin (or a clever girl) could ill afford because weakness led to death. But even if love _did_ exist as more than just a pernicious and degenerative force, she was certain that her Lyseni brother could _not_ be in love with Olive. It defied logic. What did he even _know_ about the wench that would justify such a declaration of feeling?

_And what did he know about the feeling itself?_

"Don't be jealous, Cat," the boy laughed as he noted her sour look. "If you save that gown and wear it after you're done with your assignment, I'm certain that you'll quickly find _ten_ men to fall in love with you."

The girl rolled her large, brown eyes at him and punched his uninjured arm with her balled up fist. This caused him to snicker.

"You're an idiot," the girl growled. "I'd rather wear a burlap sack than put this gown on again once I'm done with my task. I plan to throw this thing in the fire as soon as it's prudent."

"For what? A sacrifice to the Red god?" the Lyseni chuckled. "Tsk, sister, the principal elder will not be pleased if you reject the faith which has sheltered you the long years."

The Cat rolled her eyes at his jape but he was not deterred in the least from further comment.

"Well, then, perhaps a damp linen wrap?" her brother teased. "You could certainly draw a man's eye in that as well. In fact, that might be even _better._ "

"Unlike you, I don't have my head filled with stupid notions that will distract me from my duties," the Cat responded haughtily. "Unlike _you_ , I'm more worried about fulfilling the will of the Many-Faced god and the orders of Kindly Man than rolling in the sheets with some pretty thing."

"Yes, I _know_ how obedient you are when it comes to the orders of the _Kindly Man_ ," the Bear shot back sarcastically. "Your adherence to the creed of the order is _legendary."_

The girl scowled at her companion, causing him to smirk as he continued his quest to rankle her.

"As for the charge of rolling in the sheets with a pretty thing, I'll have you know that Olive and I just _talked_ last night. It was all very innocent. Nothing improper happened. However, I _have_ heard a rumor about some sheets _you_ rolled in very recently."

Cold realization gripped the Cat. Her brother had heard of her creeping from her master's chamber wearing his shirt. He must have also heard the story about the rumpled, blood-stained sheets. She was caught between murderous anger and stifling embarrassment. _Stupid, gossiping servants! Did everyone in the temple know of this ridiculous rumor?_

"I don't know if you could properly call the Lorathi master a _pretty_ thing," the Bear continued to his sister's chagrin, "but to hear the laundresses and the cook tell it, a certain beautiful acolyte has been lately more worried about slipping out of her master's cell unseen than bothering with fulfilling the orders of the principal elder."

"A complete misunderstanding," the girl was muttering as her brother laughed. "Stop laughing! It happens to be the truth."

"I just wish I could have been there to see it!" the boy snorted, unable to completely contain his amusement despite his sister's glares. "The Cat, caught in the act! And by the two people most likely to spread the news across Braavos as if their very lives depended on it!"

"There was no _act_ to be caught in!" she insisted. "I only went to his chamber after..."

The Cat paused, not sure if she should say more. Jaqen had wanted her placed out of the temple to keep her safe from the plotters whose identities and motives were still unknown. She didn't really believe the Bear would be part of the conspiracy, but he _was_ a possible suspect, just by virtue of not being one of the two people who could _not_ have been involved: Jaqen and herself. And _someone_ had hoisted her over his shoulder. The Bear was certainly strong enough for that task. But then, if her brother _was_ involved in the plot, what harm could speaking of it to him do? And if he wasn't, _again,_ what harm? Either way, she might learn something useful.

"After what?" the large acolyte probed, his face appearing genuinely interested. She decided to reveal the incident to him and watch him carefully for his reaction.

"After I climbed out of the canal and hiked back to the temple."

The boy frowned at her, his expression marked by confusion as he asked, "What are you talking about? What were you doing in the canal? You know you can't swim in those waters, Cat. There are too many eels, especially by the temple."

 _He's not that good of a liar,_ the girl thought. _He must be innocent._

The two stopped at the stall of a root seller and Mattine purchased some ginger and licorice root. The Lyseni boy remained quiet as she completed her purchase, pulling a coin from the purse given to her by the wealthy man. She was handed some smaller coins back and then the two acolytes of the House of Black and White continued their stroll. The Bear resumed the conversation in hushed tones.

"Well?"

"I didn't just decide to jump into the canal for a swim," the girl told him. "I was _thrown_ in."

The boy looked at her skeptically, saying, "Who would throw a girl into a canal infested with giant eels? Was it a gang of thieves? Were you being robbed in the street? Honestly, Cat, what good are all your fighting skills if you can't defend yourself against common thieves?"

" _It wasn't thieves_ ," she whispered through her clenched teeth. " _Shut up and listen_."

She recounted her story to the Bear in detail. His cell was in the same corridor as hers and she knew it was possible that her brother had seen or heard something suspicious. Or, he might have even overheard a conversation between conspirators in the temple that had made no sense to him at the time but with the details of her story, might become clear. She was hoping some part of her tale might cause him to remember an important detail that would provide her with a clue to follow. She finished her account by explaining briefly that she had suspected her master because of the wound she could see on the neck of one of the attackers and so she had gone to his cell to confront him and he had not allowed her to leave until morning because he feared for her safety.

"See? A misunderstanding," the Cat reiterated.

"But... how did you even get _into_ his chamber? I thought all of the masters used spelled bolts on their doors."

"They do... but his door wasn't bolted that night," the girl explained.

"Yes, but why not? I mean, don't you find that strange?"

"Find _what_ strange?"

The boy's brow furrowed and he seemed to be puzzling something out for himself. He looked at his sister and she found that his expression was... _concerned._

"Cat, you were attacked and left to your fate. At the same time, your master was _supposedly_ sleeping in an unbolted chamber. There was a man among the attackers that looked like the Lorathi..."

"His _wounds_ looked like Jaqen's but I didn't see his _face,_ " she clarified. "Jaqen didn't do this thing. He told me."

"An accomplished liar and elite assassin _told_ you he was innocent?"

"Yes, that's right."

"And you're _not_ sleeping with him?"

"No, I'm not."

"And so the reason you believe him and _know_ he isn't lying to you is..." The Bear's voice trailed off, leaving the question open.

The Cat bit Mattine's lip, realizing how all this sounded. Her brother was only drawing logical conclusions, she knew, and she couldn't fault him for that. If ten reasonable men were presented with the facts, they would all likely think the same thing the Bear was thinking, but she _knew_ the truth, despite how unlikely it appeared. _She just did._

The pair approached a spicer's stall and the girl absentmindedly chose jars of ground cinnamon and turmeric which the seller wrapped in narrow strips of linen and then put in a small, rough spun sack for her. The boy, who the Cat had believed was not paying much attention to her purchases, smirked at her as she accepted her package.

"I thought you said you weren't the cook of Lord Atius' household," he murmured as they left the spice stall.

"I'm not, but anyone may brew tea. It's fortunate that I know how to brew a special tea that relieves belly discomforts. It's a bit of knowledge my mother brought from Myr and the only thing she left me when she died," the girl replied in a sincere and almost sad voice.

"Is someone in the manse having belly discomfort?" the Bear asked in surprise.

"Not yet."

And then she gave the boy Mattine's most dazzling smile. He found that it disturbed him, but he supposed that was because he knew that behind that smile was some sort of diabolical plan that would end in a man's death. _Who knew death could look so sweet?_ He marveled that even through Mattine's face, his sister's _Cat-ness_ was evident, if only one knew where to look for it. _It was in her eyes, even through the lens of her false ones. There was a shrewdness and a malice, if you looked deep enough._

"What night did all this happen?" the boy asked suddenly.

"What? All of what?"

"The _attack_ ," the Bear clarified. "When you were tossed in to swim with the eels. When was this?"

She counted back in her head and answered, "It had to have been... just over a week ago? Maybe ten days? It was the night before I left for the inn."

Her brother seemed to be thinking back, calling up his memory of a the time period the Cat had indicated. He looked down at his sister's false face and said, "The Rat and I share a cell."

"I know."

"He wasn't there when I went to sleep that night. I don't know where he was."

"No..." she responded, shaking her head in disbelief. "Surely he wouldn't dare. After the throwing knives? How could he be so bold?" Though she did not voice it, there was a part of her that did not want to accept the rat-faced boy's involvement in the plot because she could not believe that he possessed the necessary skill and wit to best her. That she had been attacked in her own cell, trussed up and drug through the temple and then tossed into the canal was hard enough to stomach. That the feat had been carried out by the brother she disdained _most,_ though... She found it very difficult to credit the Westerosi acolyte with such prowess.

"Maybe it was _because_ of the throwing knives," the Lyseni suggested.

"But..." she started to protest but then thought about it some more. "Maybe..."

"He seems to... rather, he doesn't..."

"He has no love for me," the Cat finished for him. "But this seems beyond his usual pranks and follies."

"Yes, I agree. But maybe it wasn't his idea. You said there were _four_ men."

"True. Four. And the other three are more like to be masters or priests.."

"Yes, _masters_ ," the Bear stated in a tone that made him sound like a maester teaching a particularly dull child his letters. His look was pointed.

" _Jaqen didn't do this!"_ the Cat insisted.

Her brother looked doubtful but said, "If you say so, sister."

_How could she explain what she knew in her very bones? How could her brother even accept such a thing?_

"There has to be some _other_ explanation for what I saw," the girl said. "I know those wounds weren't Jaqen's..."

The boy answered her quietly, reminding her that sometimes, the simplest explanation really was the solution. She shook her head, adamant that he was wrong. She knew what she knew. And now, she knew something else, too; she knew that her rat-faced brother had been involved with the plot to murder her. Or test her. Or _something._ Her mood became grim as they wandered through the market and she wondered when she would have time to ask the other Westerosi just what he had meant by tossing her to the eels. _Perhaps asking wasn't exactly what she intended to do, though..._

"You really should warn your brother about his questionable activities," the girl said lightly to the Bear. "He should know what cats do with rats..."

"He's _your_ brother too, don't forget," the Lyseni boy said quickly. "Don't do anything _stupid._ "

"Don't worry, Bear. I'll not harm your friend. _Much_."

"Cat..."

"I need to know who was behind this plot. I need to know what the intention was. If the mastermind intended to kill me, then it won't be safe for me to return to the temple. It may not even be safe for me to be in _Braavos._ "

"You don't think it was some sort of prank?"

The girl pursed her lips and looked at her brother with a hint of scorn crossing Mattine's face.

"I know..." he began, hooking his arm through hers and pulling her closer into him, seeking to calm her and perhaps convince her not to murder the Rat. "It was taken a bit far for a prank... but there are other acolytes, you know. You're not exactly _friendly_ with any of them except that little Myrish boy."

"And _you_."

" _And me,_ " her brother agreed, smiling almost involuntarily. "But that is a recent development."

"It's because you respect skill, and I beat you mercilessly with skill alone in the training room."

"It's because I respect skill," he agreed, "and I thought you were going to _kiss me_ in the training room."

" _What?_ "

"Yes. Your lips were so close to my ear when you whispered for me to yield, your breath actually _tickled_ me. What is a rational man to think in such a circumstance? Why else would you put your mouth so close to my skin, if not to kiss it?" Her brother's eyebrows were raised as he asked the question and his grin was wide.

"Don't be such a giddy maiden," the girl scoffed. "My master puts his lips near _my_ skin all the time!"

"Does he now?" the Bear asked in a playful tone. "And... you _still_ insist that you're not sleeping with him? That is what you would like for me to believe?"

"Ugh! You are nearly _impossible_ to talk to!"

"I'm only trying to help you, sister. I would hate to see you fall victim to your own naiveté. I'm not sure what it means when _girls_ do it, but when a man puts his lips near your ear and whispers seductively, he's thinking about _seduction._ We're simple creatures, really."

"I know _you're_ a simple creature," the girl sniffed, "but I would hardly place Jaqen in the same category as you."

"Of course you wouldn't. You're in _love_ with him."

"You have love on the brain," the Cat accused, sounding almost disgusted by the idea. "One good night with Olive and you see it everywhere you look. I assure you, brother, there is nothing going on between my master and me."

"I didn't say that there was anything going on between you two. I said that you were in love with him."

"Don't be _stupid,_ " she scoffed.

"Don't be _dense_ , " he countered.

"I don't even believe in love!" the girl shouted and then felt a blush creep up her neck as the people milling around the market near them stopped and stared at her. She quickened her step, leaving their amused looks and snickering behind. The Bear kept pace with her easily, his long stride barely needing to quicken to match her jog.

"Cat," the Lyseni called, grasping her arm to slow her down and prevent her fleeing once they had reached the end of the market. "I'm not trying to upset you. I just think perhaps you should examine your reasons for dismissing the possibility of the Lorathi's culpability in your attack. I'd hate for you to get hurt because... _because you weren't being smart_."

"Why does it seem like everyone is warning me against trusting my master?" the girl huffed.

"Who is _everyone_?"

"Well, _you_ ," the girl stated. "And... the Kindly Man."

"The _principal elder_ warned you not to trust the Lorathi?" the boy said, stunned.

"That's what it seemed like," his sister replied. "He said something like I had to be careful not to spend my faith on the wrong people."

"Cat..." the boy began tentatively. "If the principal elder said..."

"I know, but it's _insane,_ " she declared, interrupting him. "He's not involved. I can't explain to you _how_ I know, but I know. I just do. Please, let's just stop wasting our time talking about it."

"Alright," her brother acquiesced. "I just..."

The boy stopped when he saw the Cat's warning looking. He sighed and told her, "Just please be careful."

" _Always_ ," his sister answered, causing him to snort.

" _Never!_ " he insisted. "I never met anyone so prone to... to... to _wanton recklessness!"_

The Cat rolled her eyes at her brother, showing him how unfounded she felt his concerns were. Still, it was nice that he cared, she supposed. She was satisfied enough of his good intentions that she didn't clout him when he reached over to take her arm again, leading her back through the market. Trying to guarantee that he not slip back into his paternal attitude of worrying for her, the girl asked the Lyseni what it was about Olive that had him convinced he was in love. At the mention of the buxom wench's name, the boy's face lit up and he grinned like a fool. He told his sister that he intended to sup at the inn that night, after he left the Cat to her attendant for the ride back to the manse.

"My _attendant?_ "

"The one who has been following us the entire time we've been walking in the market," the Bear explained. "Atius Biro's guard."

"Ah, him. Yes. He's a Faceless Man."

"Is he? I wondered. He just has that feel about him, doesn't he?"

"Well, to you. Because _you're_ Faceless, too."

"Not yet," the boy corrected her. "But _soon_."

" _Soon_ ," his sister echoed, with a mixture of excitement and apprehension.

"She's just so... so wonderful," the boy sighed.

"Olive? I told you that she was perfect for you."

"It's too bad that those in the order can't marry," the boy lamented.

"What? Why is _that_ too bad? Who wants to marry?" she asked, eyeing the boy suspiciously. " _Seven bloody hells, brother..._ You barely know the woman!"

"Sometimes a man just knows, Cat."

"Ugh," the girl groaned in an irritated tone. "Honestly, Bear, am I going to regret introducing you to a stupid tavern wench?"

"Olive is _not_ stupid. In fact, she seems _quite_ clever," the boy defended.

 _Yes. Too clever by half,_ the girl thought.

"I didn't mean that _she_ was stupid, Bear," the Cat sighed. "I just meant... I thought perhaps a bit of distraction before the trial... I just never thought you would get so _caught up_. And so quickly! It's ridiculous. You can't marry her, Bear."

"I _know_ that, sister. I'm not as stupid as you seem to think I am. I just meant..."

"I know what you meant, brother. But you need to put it out of your mind."

The Lyseni nodded his agreement with his sister's wisdom and laughed off her concern, but the girl still wondered if she had made a mistake in introducing them. She also wasn't convinced by her brother's supposed acceptance of what she had told him. Olive hadn't seemed the type to take any man's advances too seriously herself and it had not occurred to the Cat that her brother might think himself _in love,_ especially after just having met the serving girl. After a few moments of considering the situation, though, she allowed herself to feel at ease. She knew that the trial would soon occur and then, her brother was like to be sent far away from Braavos. He would forget Olive soon enough. She hoped Olive was not too upset by this, but knowing the wench, she would easily move on to the next handsome conquest.

The pair found themselves near the stall of a seller of frivolous, pretty things. There was a table of folded stacks of cloth in various shades and it seemed to draw the Bear's eye. The boy smiled with delight as he brushed past the table to a small rack that was piled with long, narrow scarves.

"This one," the Bear said, pulling out a fine, silken thing in a shade of blue so dark, it looked almost black until the light hit it. There was a silvery pattern embroidered into it and upon closer inspection, the girl could see that the silver things were tiny cats with curling tails. They were scattered across the scarf.

" _Terrible_ ," she declared. "That won't suit Olive's coloring _at all_."

"It's not for Olive, you little fool, it's for _you,_ " the boy laughed. "I told you I would replace your ruined scarf, and with one that suited you better."

"My coloring is the _same_ as hers, though," the Cat protested, holding up her bare, olive arms as evidence.

"Not really, though," he said in a whisper. "Maybe _Mattine's_ coloring is the same as Olive's, but not your _true_ face. This one is perfect for you. And the _cats..._ It's as if it was made for you."

"How do you know so much about girls' coloring and what shades best suit them?"

The boy shrugged, saying, "I just watch a lot of girls, I suppose."

"Well, you needn't bother replacing that stupid scarf," the Cat told him. "I don't suppose we'll be dueling in _Bravo_ disguises anytime soon. With your injury and my assignment, I'll not have a reason to wear such a thing anytime soon, anyway."

"I think I'll still buy it," he told her as he chose another scarf he thought Olive would like; one that was less subdued. "I'll just save it for you until you come home."

_Home. What a strange thought. Was the House of Black and White really home? She supposed it was; at least, as much of a home as she was ever like to have._

The girl didn't know what to say. It was a sweet gesture but she had never been really good at gracious acceptance. She thought back to the last gift she had received. _Two desiccated hearts._ This was an altogether different sort of gift. But still, the Bear was being strangely thoughtful. She knew she ought to say something appreciative and was just searching for the right words when she felt a hand grasping her elbow and then the Faceless guard who had been trailing her all afternoon leaned in and whispered in her ear.

"It's time to get back now, little wolf. Have you completed your business here?"

The apprentice nodded at the handsome man and then told her brother that she had to go back to Lord Atius' manse before he began to wonder what was keeping her. The Lyseni handed over the pack he had been carrying and bade her good luck with her task.

"Tell all of them at the inn that... well, just say hello for me," the girl requested. "And tell little Syrio to remember what I said." Her brother said that he would and they parted.

The tide was going out and the boat sat much lower in the canal. The Faceless guard leapt gracefully from the bank down into the boat. The Cat made to follow but the guard gave her a warning look and instead, she allowed herself to be helped into the vessel like some useless lady. She supposed it wouldn't do for the crew to see her dropping quietly from above like a ghost. She was meant to be a cupbearer and a pretty young girl and the plaything of a powerful lord. Behaving like a Faceless assassin was better left for the dark of night when there were no witnesses to suspect her. After a flurry of activity from the crew, they were underway once again, headed back to the manse, the two servants of the Many-Faced god once again seated on the rich cushions of the long bench in the passengers' cabin.

"I trust you were able to find what you needed in the market?" the guard asked as he peered through the porthole at the sinking sun.

"Oh, yes," Mattine answered mildly. "I found a _great many_ things." She would now be more than prepared to help the wealthy man through his impending discomfort. And if his blood was made a bit too thin by her specially brewed tea, well, that was an adverse effect that was not like to be noted.

_Not until it was too late, anyway..._

* * *

_**Headlines—**_ Drake

 _ **My Way—**_ Limp Bizkit

 _ **Pennyroyal**_ _**Tea—**_ Nirvana


	37. Chapter 37

The supper was nearly ready to be served when Mattine and Owen returned to the manse through the harbor gate. The girl had to hurry to place her purchases and her _special_ package from the temple in her bedchamber so that she could be present, as the Lord Atius expected, in the small hall (as she thought of it. The Braavosi had another name for the small dining chamber meant for family or more intimate gatherings and meals, but the Westerosi labels always stuck in the Cat's mind.) Mattine stood behind the wealthy man's chair, ready to pour for him. Typically, the wine was opened in the presence of all those dining and poured from cask or bottle into the serving pitcher. The usual routine seemed to be that a small cup was poured for Owen to taste and if a suitable amount of time passed and he did not begin to froth at the mouth or turn an unhealthy color or keel over, then it was served to the family. The food from the kitchen was prepared under the watchful eye of guards posted there, so in the manse at least, the Faceless guard was not required to taste the meal before it could be consumed by the family. The servants were often fed the same food, a luxury to be sure, and one that also served to prevent any of them from slipping any _extra ingredients_ into the cooking pots.

Biro's eldest child still living in his house was a daughter, nearly of an age with Mattine, if the Cat had to guess about it. There were older sons who had married and had families of their own and there was a younger son, a boy of ten, also living at the manse, but it was this daughter, Biro's only acknowledged girl child, that interested Mattine.

The wealthy man's daughter reminded the cupbearer very much of Olive, though she was not quite so plump or buxom. She might still be growing, though; some ladies did continue to develop until they were five- or even six and ten. _Late-blooming flowers_ Arya recalled overhearing Theon Greyjoy say to Robb once when discussing one or another of the young servant girls at Winterfell; a girl who the older boy insisted would someday turn into a beauty, justifying his attentions to her. By the time the wealthy man's daughter was done with her growth, she might possibly achieve the same soft, voluptuous, curved appearance as her half-sister boasted.

While the family settled into their meal and the nearly-Faceless cupbearer had a few moments of stillness (having already poured the wine), she considered the strange machinations of fate and wondered why the mysterious and unexplainable force had allowed one dimpled daughter to sit at table consuming expensive food and wine with her father while the other toiled over the less-expensive food and wine of others in an inn across the harbor from the manse, unacknowledged by the man from whose loins she sprang. For that matter, why had _Arya Stark_ been born into privilege, a daughter of Winterfell and of the North, meant to be married off to forge some alliance or another for her house, yet ended up a Cat, serving a god she only learned of through chance, standing now in the small dining hall of a Braavosi manse, waiting to perform the will of Him of Many Faces (which, in this instance, meant sending a wealthy man from the world)?

Lord Atius' wife was rail-thin, giving her face a severe and gaunt appearance. With a little more weight on her bones, the Cat saw that she could be a handsome woman and had probably been a great beauty when Biro first wed her. _Of course she was, else he would not have had her._ Though the typical style in Braavos was for women to wear their hair in loose curls that cascaded down their backs (this likely evolved for the convenience of taking advantage of the naturally curly hair that was a prominent feature of the Braavosi), Biro's wife had her hair pulled back into an intricate style of knots and braids, wound all around the back of her skull. The front was plain, pulled away tightly from her face and oiled so that the black mane shone in the candlelight. The tightness of the knots and braids seemed to pull so harshly at the roots anchoring the hair over the woman's forehead that the Cat was amazed the wealthy man's wife tolerated it. It looked _painful_ and only served to increase her dour appearance. But then, perhaps that was the effect she was hoping to project. Being the great lady of a great manse with a great many servants, she likely gave orders all day long and her face was one of a woman who was not like to be questioned or disobeyed. At least, that is what the Cat thought when she looked at her. In truth, the new cupbearer had not interacted much with the woman to this point and was not sure what her demeanor was like. It was entirely possible that the wealthy man's wife was pleasant and kind, despite her stern appearance.

"Atius, I will need to find another lady's maid," the woman said after slowly and precisely chewing a small bite of her fish and swallowing it down.

"Indeed, my dear?" the man responded distractedly. "What happened to the old one?"

"She won't be fit for service for a few days, and even then, it's the kitchens I'm sending her to. I had her scourged for looking at me insolently."

_Not pleasant and kind, then._

"My dear Vorena, you cannot keep..."

"Atius, I am certain the girl was planning to steal from me. When she helped me put my pearls on, she touched them in an astonishingly covetous way. When I made mention of this, she gave me a most insolent look. An insubordinate servant who plans to steal from me will not be tolerated," the woman replied in a matter-of-fact way that brooked no argument.

_Not pleasant or kind, but definitely paranoid._

"Honestly, Atius, with the trouble _you've_ had with _your_ servants, I would think you would be more understanding," Lady Vorena finished, giving the new cupbearer a sour frown as she said it. Mattine could feel the woman's eyes passing over her, appraising her and finding her distasteful. Perhaps it was because the new servant looked so much like the old one, or perhaps it was a look that would have been given any pretty, young thing chosen to serve the master's wine. The Cat made a vow to avoid Lady Vorena as much as possible, as being scourged was likely to interfere with the plan the assassin was formulating.

"Yes, well..." the wealthy man began, clearing his throat several times as he cast about for a way to change the subject. "We should discuss Lidia's nameday and betrothal."

It was a shrewd move and clever distraction that the man had provided, as it caused his daughter to leap into the conversation immediately, drawing her mother's attention away from her father and his cupbearer and into the happy planning of the celebration. As the cupbearer drifted noiselessly around the table refilling wine glasses, she absorbed all the details that were being discussed and suppressed the tiny, malicious smile that the Cat felt twitching on her lips. In ten days' time, the manse would be awash with the Braavosi elite, friends from the upper echelons of the Iron Bank, the wealthiest of the well-respected merchants, and the Sealord himself, as it was his son that Lidia was to marry. The betrothal announcement was to take place at her nameday feast, making the affair doubly special. Everything was to be the finest, from the food to the decor to the dishes used to serve the guests. It was sure to be a truly memorable night for the well-respected patricians of Braavos.

_Truly memorable indeed._

As the talk surrounding the details of the festivities drifted to the planned entertainments, Lidia's eyes lit up as she suddenly remembered something and she then made mention to her parents that she had overheard some servants saying that _The King's Fool_ had pulled into port recently. The dimpled daughter very much wished to attend one of the mummers' shows. The last time they had been in port, she was only a small girl but recalled how her father had brought her to see the entertainment and how she had been held up on the shoulders of one of Lord Atius' guards so that she might better see. She let out a wistful sigh as she recounted the memory. It was less-likely that the girl had a care to see traveling mummers and more that she wished to relive a happy memory, the Cat realized as she studied the girl's face.

 _She is about to be married to the son of a prominent man. She wishes one last, childish diversion before she must behave like the good-daughter of the Sealord of Braavos,_ the cupbearer thought to herself.

Lady Vorena unsurprisingly voiced slight disapproval but her husband seemed to think it a fitting thing for a girl who would soon no longer be a girl to do. Lidia clapped delightedly and her smile was bright and genuine. _And so like Olive's._ The Cat wondered if her Lyseni brother might be planning to take the tavern wench to the same show. How strange it would be for the two sisters to come face to face. The cupbearer wondered if there was any way to arrange her own accompaniment of Lidia to the newly arrived mummers' performance. It would give her another chance to leave the manse and meet with her brother, or maybe Jaqen. _So that I might trouble him for more supplies from the waif's stores,_ she thought. _Only that._ The Bear's words writhed in her mind, fighting hard to be considered, but she fought harder to push them away. _That's because you're in love with him,_ she heard the Lyseni acolyte saying to her in the market despite her efforts to quell the memory.

"Pah!" the cupbearer said quietly. The sound wasn't loud but it drew a sharp look from Biro's wife and the Cat was forced to cover her utterance with a small cough and a look of apology.

_Bloody Bear, saying stupid things and distracting me from what's really important._

The girl allowed Mattine to completely descend over her once again and she pushed out all the thoughts that might interfere with her ability to be a convincing cupbearer equipped with Faceless skills. She needed to hear all that was being said, to study every gesture and nuance, to know what was behind each face so that she could glean the details she needed to weave a believable reason for her to be where she needed to be and do what she needed to do in order to accomplish her task. Vaguely, she wondered if her Lorathi master ever found himself distracted when he was engaged in the work of the order. Somehow, she doubted it. She knew she must learn to master the ability to concentrate completely, despite the distractions she encountered. She _must_ be more like Jaqen.

* * *

The Lorathi assassin found he could not concentrate completely on what his sister was saying to him. He was ruminating over the details he had so recently learned from the Westerosi boy regarding the attack on his apprentice. While he was thinking on what the acolyte had told him (and also, what the boy had _not_ told him), it was made apparent that he had missed some question the waif was asking him because all at once, he became aware of the deafening silence in the passageway when it was abruptly interrupted by the woman's tiny foot stamping. The _tap-tap-tap_ of her sole on the dark stones of the floor echoed down the corridor in which they had recently paused to speak.

"Brother, what distracts you?" she demanded. "It seems you have heard nothing I have said!"

"A man offers you his sincere apology, sister." In truth, he had not heard what his sister had told him. Exasperated, she repeated herself.

"Several vials were taken from my stores, along with a mortar and pestle and some fairly rare dried flowers and plants. When I asked the acolytes about it, the Lyseni boy told me his sister had asked for the things and he obliged her by bringing them to her earlier today."

Jaqen shrugged, saying, "The girl must plan to use a poison that she must make." There could be good reason for making the poison in the manse. It could be that the waif's stores lacked the particular brew his lovely girl needed and therefore she was left with little choice but to make it herself. It could also be that she needed the concoction to be fresh, as some poisons degraded quickly and only had a short time between the making and the usage of them, elsewise they were rendered impotent and became of no more use than water sprinkled over food or in wine.

"Indeed," the woman agreed. "The vials and plants that were missing _will_ make poison. They will make the Tears of Lys."

The Lorathi narrowed his eyes. It was a costly poison, and rare. So rare, in fact, that its use would be immediately traced back to the temple, should it be identified as the cause of the wealthy man's death. There was an unspoken rule that this particular mode of death was not used in Braavos, as the Faceless Men relied on the good will of the city and the authorities therein to operate. The rules were simple: kill with impunity, just don't get caught. To be caught would be to cause a scandal of untold magnitude and it would embarrass the Sealord and force his hand. A war between the Braavosi authorities and the Faceless Men would be disastrous both for the city and for the order. Even the Iron Bank would be affected and that could conceivably be disastrous for the whole of the world. Atius Biro was very prominent in the city and if his death were definitively laid on the steps of the House of Black and White, well, the consequences did not bear thinking about.

"Surely she would not..." Jaqen started, and then his voice trailed off. _Would she?_

"You would know, I suppose, since you know her better than anyone, brother. Well, better than anyone but the principal elder, perhaps."

At her words, the Lorathi assassin's heartbeat quickened. This was the second time his sister had made reference to the elder and his relationship with the girl. The comment seemed to be made in passing, but there was an economy of words typically employed among the members of the order that made it unlikely that the woman was speaking casually. _What was she trying to tell him?_ He knew it was useless to ask. If he did, he would only be given a passive look and told that she didn't know what he meant. That's what he would have done in her place.

"A man will discuss this with his apprentice, and soon. She is surely aware that she must tread carefully on this assignment but still... A man will speak with her."

The waif nodded and then said, "Valar morghulis, brother" before continuing on her way down the corridor.

"Valar dohaeris, sister," the Lorathi murmured as he headed in the opposite direction, toward his chamber. He needed to change his clothing. He would be paying a visit to his apprentice tonight. Jaqen felt a strange pang at the thought, and he wondered at that. Perhaps he was merely excited by the prospect of solving the riddle of how to bypass a contingent of household guards and the high walls of the manse in order to speak to his apprentice on the matters of _discretion_ and _caution_.

* * *

Lady Vorena and her children had retired after eating their fill in the small hall but Lord Atius had stayed behind to have another cup of wine before retiring to his solar. He told his wife that he needed to review some papers that he had not had the time to get to earlier in the afternoon. As long as he was drinking, Mattine was expected to stay by his side, ready to serve.

The kitchen girls had come and gone, clearing the table and tidying the chamber so that it would be ready for the family to break their fast on the morrow. They left only the wealthy man's cup and the pitcher still half-filled with wine. A few moments after the last of the servants left, the house seemed to grow very quiet. This is what made it sound very loud indeed to the cupbearer's ear when the wealthy man cleared his throat. The Cat looked at the back of the dead man's head from her post a few steps behind Lord Atius' right shoulder as she waited expectantly for whatever pretext he was planning to use to try to get her in his bed tonight.

 _Just one more night,_ she thought. _Then he won't be so interested._

"Mattine, more wine," he called to her, holding up his goblet for her to see. The cup was really an exquisite thing with its gleaming silver stem seemingly created from vines twisted together and the curving fingers that rose from the top of the stem beaten and worked into the shape of pointed flower petals which served to hold the glass bowl in place. It had been quite costly, the girl was sure. For the price of the set of the goblets the family had used to drink their supper wine, the wealthy man could have taken care of his bastard daughter or son quite nicely. For life.

"Yes, my lord," the girl returned, lifting the pitcher from the table where it sat along the wall behind the wealthy man. As she crossed the floor of the chamber and approached her master's side, she saw him move his cup further from the edge of the table. _So that's his plan,_ she thought. He meant to make his cupbearer lean across the table, in front of him, to pour his wine. _Would he grab her? How disappointing._ She had hoped his plan called for more subtlety. She had, after all, taken care to show how naïve and oblivious Mattine was to the more sophisticated ways of the world.

When the cupbearer reached the table, she leaned across it to retrieve the goblet so that she might fill it as requested. Just as her fingertips brushed the silver stem of the cup, she felt Lord Atius place the soft palm of his hand flatly against the bare skin of her lower back. _His hands were too soft for a man._ The girl gave a shudder that she could have chosen to suppress but she felt it might be to her advantage to show it. She knew that with Biro's natural arrogance and his mind clouded by lust, he was like to see the small shiver as evidence of his cupbearer's enjoyment of his advances rather than proof of the cringing revulsion it actually was.

The Cat knew it was time to give the wealthy man a bit of encouragement; some indication that she found him as desirable as the cupbearer's sister once did. He would be less likely to be suspicious of her or question her motivations in the days to come if he believed that he was awakening a lust in her. And so it was for this reason that she did not jerk away or cry out in alarm when Lord Atius slowly moved his palm over her back, tracing the ridges of her spine with his fingertips, travelling higher and higher. Mattine sucked in a small, barely audible breath and Biro was delighted at the sound, as well as at the goose prickles that rose on her skin.

The useful thing about goose prickles is that one set looks very much like another and it is not completely possible to say with certainty whether they have arisen as a consequence of sensuous desire, abject fear, or a sort of intense awareness of the fact that one may very soon find oneself using an expensive goblet as an instrument of death. _It would actually do quite nicely,_ the assassin thought, _though its value would be rather diminished in the process._ The source of her goose prickles remained a mystery, and so the man determined for himself the likely cause of them. He decided that it was the girl's pleasure at his expert touch that drew them from her skin and it was for _this_ reason that when Atius Biro saw the changing flesh on the back of his cupbearer and asked her in a disgustingly knowing tone if she felt chilled and she was able to answer in a soft voice that no, no, she felt quite w _arm_ , as a matter of fact, that he believed wholeheartedly in her sincerity.

 _I ought to be a damned mummer,_ the Cat thought wryly.

They were frozen in this strange tableau, Mattine bent over the edge of the table, reaching for a goblet and her master slowly stroking the exposed flesh of her back, moving his hand ever higher. The girl was just about to say something suitably subtle to her master that might give an indication that she welcomed his touch when she suddenly felt him pull on the ribbon that held her gathered neckline together and then the upper part of the dress fell away from her neck and chest and onto the table over which she bent. The girl squealed in surprise (the Cat was only mildly surprised at the behavior, mostly because it was occurring so early in her tenure as cupbearer, but _Mattine_ was absolutely shocked) and grabbed at her dress, clutching it to her and stepping away from the table, knocking over the wine pitcher as she did. It was a purposeful distraction and one she felt was likely to result in the cooling of Lord Atius' ardor (wasted wine would dampen the mood of many a man). The red liquid stained the front of her gown and spread over the table but did not touch the wealthy man. This did not seem to matter to him, however. His eyes, just a bare instant before full of nothing but lust, now showed only naked rage.

The Cat sensed that his hand was about to fly. She saw the arc of the blow, tracing it with her eyes even before it had begun and she knew she could avoid it. The girl could have easily dodged or intercepted the man's hand before it made contact with her cheek . She could have beaten him, quite literally, to the punch. If she had not had a care for the precise fulfillment of Mattine's last wishes, she could have even ended the man's life then and there by shattering the globe of his ostentatious wine glass and then jamming the sharp edges of the silver flower petals at the top of the stem through his skull and into his brain. But she did none of these things because these were not skills Mattine had reason to possess. Lord Atius was going to strike her and she was going to have to take it. Things were setting up too nicely for her to risk ruining her plans in the avoidance of a simple slap. Unfortunately, it was the back of his hand that the man used and as she saw it coming, she had time to think, _Oh, hells!_ before she had been knocked to the ground, her lip broken and bleeding as her cheekbone throbbed.

Mattine would cry out and so the Cat cried out and tried to work up a small sob. She tasted the salty metal of blood in her mouth and wondered just briefly if her true face would bruise or would it only be Mattine's ( _I'll ask Jaqen the next time I see him,_ she decided.) She chanced a glance at the wealthy man who had stood up from his seat. The anger seemed to have evaporated from his eyes in an instant but it had been replaced with a coldness and for the first time, the Cat wondered how willing a lover Hellind had really been.

"Clean this mess up," the lord commanded as he stepped past the quaking girl on the floor clutching her loose dress to her breast, and then he was gone. A moment later, after the girl had risen and was tying the ribbon at her neck into a triple knot, the Faceless guard entered the room quietly. Though her back was to the door, she knew he was there as she felt the subtle change of the pressure in the room but heard no steps or creak of hinges. Only a Faceless Man could enter a room so silently.

"Are you alright?" the handsome man asked her quietly.

"I'm fine. He hits like an old woman," the Cat laughed bitterly, wiping the blood from her swollen lip as she turned to face him. "Shouldn't you be guarding him instead of asking me questions?"

"Outside of the house, I am always with him. Inside, the responsibility rotates," the man explained as if he thought she was really interested in the schedule the guards kept while their master slept.

And maybe she was, come to think of it.

The girl moved to the table to clean up the spilled wine and the guard walked over to her, remarking on the state of her dress. The Cat looked down at her wine-stained layers and sighed. She supposed she would have to wash it out tonight, but she had planned to work on her special version of the Tears of Lys after the kitchen was quiet. She had need of some of the cook's equipment and did not want to have to explain to anyone how she planned to use it.

The handsome man reached for her face, making an assessment of her injuries as he tilted her head so that he could get a better look at the damage.

"The cheek will be discolored for a while and there's already some swelling, but if you get a cool cloth on it, you can reduce that a bit," he advised mildly. "The lip could use some salve."

Her tongue darted over her swollen, bloodied lower lip as she considered the Faceless master's advice. She'd had worse; _much_ worse. The Cat didn't have time to play maester to herself. If she didn't get her potion concocted tonight, she would have to find other ways to dance around the dead man's advances. One spilled pitcher of wine was enough to taste the back of his hand across her cheek and mouth. She did not like to think what his answer to a second spilled pitcher would be. The cupbearer quickly cleaned the wasted wine and then carried the pitcher back to the kitchen to rinse it out, leaving her Faceless chaperone to his own devices. She did not have time for his concern; there was work to be done.

* * *

It was a few hours before sunrise when the Cat returned to Mattine's bed chamber. She carried a single narrow taper with her, the candle casting a small circle of light around her, mostly useful so that she did not trip over anything immediately before her. The chamber she had been given was a small cell in a part of the manse where no one else slept and likely had been meant originally to be some sort of storage area but at some point, a bed and desk with a chair had been placed within it. The Cat wasn't complaining—the privacy allowed for her to engage in... _activities_ not included in the duties she was brought to the manse to perform. She suspected that privacy was the reason she was given this cell. It would certainly be easier for a lord to visit his paramour in her own bed if there were not others sleeping a few feet away from her. The other servants shared rooms she knew, and slept on the other side of the house, below the kitchen. The family, of course, slept upstairs but still on the opposite side of the house from her own bed.

Before beginning her work with the supplies gathered for her by her large brother, the girl had scrubbed at her wine-stained gown briefly, removing only some of the red mark left there by the spill, but she had been more interested in completing her task of creating her poison than in doing laundry and so the gown remained in a decidedly sorry state. She sighed, determining that she would have to try again to clean it, now that she had finished with her more pressing business. The Cat could not care less if the awful dress was stained or ruined, but she would need to make it presentable if only so as not to attract unwanted attention from Biro or his wife for her disgraceful appearance on the morrow.

The Cat thought of the concoction in the tiny vial she now carried in her palm and quickly fell to her knees, slipping the glass container under her mattress, using the crossing ropes that held the mattress in place as a sort of strap to secure it there. The apprentice decided she must come up with a name for the stuff. Its much stronger cousin was called by the terrifying epithet of _Tears of Lys_ but as no one was like to cry over the effects of her version, that simply would not do. _Privy of Lys_ was not elegant enough and _Vexation of Lys_ didn't sit well with her either. _Watery Bowels of Lys_ might be accurate but was a bit much to scratch on a label (the vial was so _very_ small). She would have to think on it more later. She had created the less-potent poison the waif had lectured her about avoiding recently, and then, unsure if even that might be too strong for what she had in mind, the girl had remembered the heated discussion at the supper table with the members of the order over the efficacy of half-strength poisons and watered the stuff down further, to (not surprisingly) half of its strength. She resolved to test one drop of it on Atius the next day and monitor the effects. She could adjust the dosing from there.

 _Titrate to effect_ , she recalled the waif saying to her once, though the tiny woman had been speaking about Sweetsleep at the time.

The memory made her smile, as did the memory of the half-strength poison debate. She had asked the Bear to bring her a vial of Sweetsleep drops when he brought her the other supplies. She had diluted this, just as she had diluted the... _Colic of Lys?_ She did not intend to use the Sweetsleep to deliver the gift to anyone in the house but having a substance that could guarantee drowsiness could have its uses and she felt it better to be prepared and have it available, in case she ever had need of it. The acolyte was convinced that diluting the stuff to half-strength would guarantee that a drop would have more natural appearing effects; a slower and gentler onset of sleep which would be less likely to garner suspicion than would a head dropping suddenly into a bowl of broth in the middle of supper. She slipped her newly-weakened vial of Sweetsleep between the mattress and rope, next to the vial of… _Cramps of Lys_?

While pleased that all was going according to plan thus far, the cupbearer was less pleased to find that the triple knot she had tied with the ribbons that held her gown on was much easier to create than to release. She had her arms bent at the elbow on either side of her head, picking furiously at the tight knot behind her neck with her fingernails, short as they were. She should have known that this would be a harbinger of her Lorathi master's arrival in her room, but since the manse was well-guarded and there was already one Faceless master within the walls of Lord Atius' house, Jaqen was honestly the last person she expected to see come through her door just then.

So, of course, he did.

He wore the face of one of Biro's household guards, a man the Cat had seen a few times around the manse, usually monitoring the door that led from the garden into the house, but there was no doubt that it was Jaqen once he spoke.

"Lovely girl, if you cannot manage even _this_ simple sack of a dress, then a man may soon insist you simply go around naked to save yourself the time."

"What are you doing here?" the Cat hissed, still struggling futilely with the knot, covering her surprise at her master's arrival with convincing irritation.

The room was dim and Mattine's hair was hanging over her cheek, hiding the worst of her injuries, but just the same, she turned her back quickly to her master and offered him the knot she knew he would take from her anyway. She recalled his command that she return to him _unharmed_ and she did not wish to engage in a debate with her mentor just then about how differently they each interpreted that order. Without a word, the Lorathi strode over to his apprentice and deftly worked the ties until all at once, they fell away.

"Is there a reason a wealthy man's cook is dressed as a wealthy man's whore?" Jaqen asked lightly, placing his hand on her bare shoulder for a brief moment before using his warm palm to slowly trace the line of her arm to her fingertips. "This mode of dress is not practical in a kitchen, a man believes. It leaves too much flesh unprotected and prone to burns."

The _unprotected flesh_ which Jaqen stroked formed goose prickles once again, only this time, the cause was quite different than that which resulted in the phenomenon while in the wealthy man's presence.

"I suspect the reason for it is that a wealthy man plans to _make_ me his whore," she answered with a nonchalance she did not feel. Her master was robbing her of her concentration.

"Hmm," was all he said in response. The apprentice wondered if she was only imagining the sudden tension in her master's hand or if it was really there.

"Besides, I'm not his cook, I'm his _cupbearer,_ " the girl added belatedly. She stepped away from Jaqen, hoping her mind would become clearer if she placed a littler distance between them. Clutching her stained gown to her breast with one hand, she walked to the small trunk at the foot of her bed and threw open the lid with the other hand, pulling her master's favorite shirt from the messy pile of clothes within the box.

"His cupbearer?" the Lorathi mused. "Indeed."

"I hope you don't mind that I kept this," the girl stated with insincere concern but she did not wait for her mentor's reply before slipping the soft, white garment over her head . Once the hem of the blouse had settled over her thighs, she allowed the stained dress given her by Atius Biro to fall into a puddle around her feet.

The Cat heard Jaqen's soft sigh and she mistook it as being caused by her master's irritation with her for never returning the blouse, so she turned Mattine's gaze upon him and gave him a wicked grin, meaning to playfully provoke him. Rather than vexing him further as she had expected to do, she read sudden alarm in his face and could not fathom what had caused it. The shirt was not damaged, only a little wrinkled, and though Jaqen was fastidious, he was not so concerned for his clothes that a few wrinkles in a blouse he wasn't even wearing would cause the look she saw on his face just then. Still, her master was across the chamber in an instant and then his hands were on either side of her false face, thumbs lightly stroking her chin.

"Lovely girl," he whispered, his eyes piercing hers, "who has done this to you?"

"Done?" she questioned and then remembered her split lip and swollen, bruised cheekbone. "Oh! That…"

Jaqen drew her closer to the lit taper on her bedside table and made an examination of her false face in the light. She winced slightly as he probed the swollen cheekbone and then tugged at her lip to see if the laceration continued into the inside of her mouth.

"Does it look bad?" his apprentice asked him. "I haven't seen it yet."

The Lorathi did not answer her but instead, demanded his own answer.

"A man would know who did this."

"Atius Biro," the Cat replied, and then, remembering the potion she had only just brewed ( _Dysentery of Lys?),_ she smiled maliciously and told her master not to worry, Lord Atius would pay for his actions, and soon.

"Just so," Jaqen seethed in his quiet, dangerous way. Someone who did not know him well might miss the suggestion of threat in his voice, but his apprentice was well acquainted with the intensity of his understated fury. The assassin could feel himself trying to split in two again in that moment, just as he had done once before when his lovely girl had played at seducing him. This time, though, he fought to keep himself together because he was not certain that his Faceless, restrained part would be the dominant side. He feared that if he allowed himself to split in two, it would be Jaqen H'ghar who took control, and then a wealthy man would be very shortly murdered by the Lorathi's hand. Slowly.

_Very Slowly._

The master assassin was not guarding his face as well as he ought, for his apprentice grabbed his arms near his shoulders with her small hands and shook him a little, pulling him back from his savage thoughts and telling him that it was her place to do what needed doing, not her master's.

"I was sent here for this," the cupbearer reminded the assassin. "This is not your assignment. This is _my_ task, and I _will_ do it."

"A lovely girl may recall that a man was opposed to this plan from the first," Jaqen reminded her grimly.

The Cat snorted and replied in a laughing voice as she indicated the injuries to her false face by trailing her fingertips lightly over them, "I've gotten worse than this within the walls of the temple, and at the hands of my brothers and masters, if you'll remember. I've had worse than this at _your_ hands." Here, she thought of her bruised neck, the result of her mentor teaching her the lesson of obedience and caution. The Lorathi recalled it as well but he knew that his... _instruction_ was different than this wealthy lord's abuse. Jaqen knew how far he would go and what he would do and what he would _not_ do. He did not have to worry that his corrections would cause any real harm to his lovely girl. He meant only to equip her with the skills she would need to survive in the world. He only wanted to keep her safe and _alive._ He had no such assurances from Lord Atius.

Jaqen continued to inspect his apprentice, pushing up the long sleeves of her blouse ( _his_ blouse) and turning her arms to look for bruises and scratches; pulling the neck of the shirt down lower, first in the front and then in the back to assess the state of the skin there; pushing Mattine's thick curls first one way and then the other to bare each part of her neck and assure himself that she had suffered no other injuries other than the ones he had already seen. The Cat endured his examination meekly and in silence. When it seemed that her master had finished, she spoke.

"Surely you don't think me so weak that a little blood and bruising will deter me?" the girl asked her master gently, a hint of worry in her voice. She needed for him to know that she was always in control and that she did not require rescue. "I didn't _have_ to let him hit me, you know..."

"Unharmed means _unharmed._ "

"How would you respond if I commanded you to return to the temple unharmed as you were preparing to leave for your next assignment? And should I berate you if you happen to return to me… or, rather, to the temple, with a scratch on your arm or a broken toe?"

Her master did not comment on her small slip of the tongue but told her, "A girl does not give a man commands. _She_ is the apprentice. _A man_ is the master."

The Cat knew Jaqen only spoke out of his concern for her well-being and so she struggled to stay calm and not lose her temper as they talked. _He means no insult. This isn't about him doubting my skills,_ she told herself. _He's just worried._

"Jaqen," the girl began softly, taking his hands in her own and looking into his eyes. She wanted him to _see_ her and to _listen_ to her and to _understand._ "These wounds are nothing. They are _less_ than nothing. They were a calculation on my part. They bought me much more than they cost me. Please, be at ease."

The Lorathi knew his apprentice was scolding him, in her way, because he had trained her for this and for worse. Much worse. He _knew_ she was capable of taking care of herself and he should not be so worried for her. His lovely girl was chastising him, for she did not care to be thought of as weak.

And he did not think her weak. The assassin knew his apprentice could tolerate pain and was nothing if not brave. He knew she had a particular armor, slowly developed over time through circumstance and chance; an armor that protected her against the emotional trauma sometimes associated with physical abuse. Rather than breaking her, this sort of treatment from the wealthy man would only strengthen her resolve. The Cat did not know how to back away from adversity and danger. She only understood charging ahead, no matter how foolhardy it might seem to others. Why, then, did seeing the blood dried upon her false lip and seeing the darkened, swollen mark on her false cheek bother him so much? He understood that she was _fine_ and yet he _still_ burned with rage inside. He felt driven to do terrible things to this _wealthy man_.

_Fearsome things. Painful things. Deservedly horrific things._

Had his lovely girl shed but a single tear, a thousand household guards could not have saved Atius Biro from the wrath of Jaqen H'ghar. Had she but whispered the lord's name in his ear, he would have required nothing more in order to drain the life from the man and would have done so with a glad heart. Had she but asked it of him, he would have burned the manse to the ground without a word and then dared her _Kindly Man_ to question him about it. It was as if Jaqen could feel Arya pulling him to her; as if she were emitting an inescapable force that drew him nearer and nearer to her. He wondered if this was more evidence of the magic of the old gods; if he, like the steel of her knives, obeyed her will and whim unconsciously, moving and bending only as she desired, powerless to resist her. He sensed that his heart was somehow becoming bound to hers, and he knew this was a _dangerous_ thing and he knew it would displease the principal elder and he knew that it would weaken him, and weaken _her_ in some ways as well. He understood that this would introduce fear into their lives, for neither man nor woman can fear losing something that each does not already have.

Love was weakness. Possession was weakness. Obligation was weakness. Identity was weakness. Jaqen had only just begun to understand what it was to have something; to _feel_ something; to cherish something; to _be_ something (or, more precisely, to be _someone_ ). Now, it was quickly becoming apparent to him that the problem was _not_ that he now had her; it was that _she_ had _him._ And then suddenly, he knew what it was to be owned; to be possessed; to surrender dominion over oneself to another.

He knew it was folly.

And he did not care.

"What have you done to a man, lovely girl?" he murmured, dropping his face into her hair as he wrapped her in his arms. He whispered his lament against the top of her head, and she did not understand his meaning. When he spoke, his voice was weighted with the despair of a man who is lost; thoroughly, desperately, frighteningly, irrevocably lost. "What have you done? What have you done? What have you done?"

* * *

 _ **Shattered—**_ Remy Zero (From you, one look, _just one look_ , and everything is shattered. From you, one word; towers burn and fall, fall apart)


	38. Chapter 38

The Cat was wrapped in her master's arms, her own arms bent at the elbow with hands laid flat against Jaqen's chest. Her false cheek—the uninjured one—was pressed against the boiled leather of the familiar household guard's garb. The girl did not understand the meaning behind his words. She was not privy to his thoughts and did not know what he meant by asking her repeatedly what she had done.

 _What_ have _I done?_ she wondered.

There was something in his voice as he spoke... She could not name it and she could not interpret it in her mind, but she _felt_ it deep inside of herself and it gripped her heart and attempted to steal her breath. She fought against the unsettling feeling and inhaled deeply, a futile attempt to slow the runaway pace that her heart had suddenly adopted. Rather than calming her when she did this, however, her heart squeezed even harder and more painfully beneath her breast, for her deep inhalation had brought to her nose the scent of cloves and ginger and leather. Why the redolent medley should affect her so, she did not know, but her head swam, just for an instant, as she commanded her heart to slow and her mind to be reasonable and quit _spinning_. She nearly laughed as a giddy realization fluttered through her thoughts. _He smells like himself even when wearing someone else's face._ She believed then that no matter who he was pretending to be or where he might find himself in the world, if she was but close enough to catch his scent, she would know him anywhere.

The Lorathi assassin held his lovely girl in his arms for a few moments more, no longer murmuring into her false curls but still with his lips and nose buried there. His eyes, however, rested upon the door to her chamber and he studied it even as he pulled her tighter to him. There was no slat or bolt with which to secure it. There was no way to prevent unwanted visitors from entering the cell. Had he not walked in only moments before, completely unimpeded, and found the girl attempting to undress herself? He wondered if she had managed to secret a dagger into the manse with her and if so, did she sleep with it under her pillow?

Jaqen misliked the turn this assignment had taken. He misliked that she had left the relative safety of the inn for the wealthy man's manse. He misliked that so many swords surrounded his lovely girl and she had none of her own. He misliked that the man she was meant to kill had settled so much of his attentions upon her, and that those attentions were both lascivious and violent. He misliked that she was as far away from the temple, and himself, as she could possibly be while still remaining in Braavos.

Jaqen found it easier to impose his will upon his apprentice when she was being petulant or when she was flustered or angry. It was much more difficult for him when she was serious and calm and determined. She had used reason and soft words to entice him into consenting to her plan to enter the manse in the first place and now she was doing it again to convince him that she should stay. Her imploring, sincere look coupled with her gentle tone bewitched and beguiled him and he had felt lulled into accepting her argument but the longer he stood holding her, the more unsure he became about giving her up to suffer the whims and inclinations of Atius Biro. Could he abandon her here and trust in her abilities and skills to protect her? It would seem he did not have a choice in the matter. This was not Westeros and she was not his lady wife, obedient and meek. He could not sweep her up and carry her away against her will. He almost smiled at the thought—anyone foolish enough to try that would likely find themselves stabbed with a quickness. No, he would have to leave his ferocious Cat here to finish her work just as he would have to return to the temple to continue his.

Her master released her from his arms and placed his hands upon her shoulders, pushing her away from him slightly so that he might see her face better and study it more closely. His steady gaze awakened that twisting sensation in the girl's gut that she recalled feeling first when Umma had accused the Cat of flirting with her master. She did not understand it and she wasn't sure what she should do about it, but she held his gaze, waiting for him to speak. He peered intently into her false eyes as if searching for some answer to an unasked question. Finding none, he sighed and guided her to her bed, indicating that she should rest. The sunrise was not far off and she would be expected to function in her role as cupbearer despite the late hours she was keeping. She protested, saying she had to clean her gown, elsewise it would be ruined. He cocked an eyebrow at her and then looked disdainfully at the soiled garment heaped upon the floor, saying she should wear Mattine's own clothes instead. She shrugged, accepting his wisdom.

 _Let Lord Atius comment upon the change of uniform in front of the others_ , the Cat thought as one side of her mouth curled upwards. _He will only indict himself._

 _Let this wealthy man try to make her wear that whore's uniform again,_ the Lorathi thought as the corners of his mouth drew down into a frown, _and he won't live long enough for a lovely girl to complete her task._

"I don't know that I should bother with sleep," she remarked as she eased her head back against her pillow. "There's so little time until I must begin my duties, and you obviously have something of importance to discuss, or you wouldn't be here."

"A man will not be here long."

She expected him to sit down next to her on the mattress as he had done so many times before and discuss whatever it was that had brought him to the manse of the wealthy man. She thought he might even have some previously unused trick of Asshai to heal her lip or reduce the swelling and ache over her cheekbone. She believed he might lay his hands on her and whisper some words of comfort or perhaps tease and jape with her about something that would vex her but still result in his warm skin brushing hers somehow. Instead, he walked to the small desk opposite the bed and sat in the chair he found there after turning it to face her. The girl felt a sharp pang at that, almost a sense of rejection, for which she inwardly chastised herself.

 _Why should I even care where he sits?_ she huffed to herself.

 _You know why,_ her annoying little voice told her and she thought then that if her annoying little voice had a face, she would punch it.

 _The Bear has a face, though,_ she thought with a frown. _Maybe I should punch him instead, for putting his silly notions in my head, just because he's all twisted up in knots over Olive._

"A man sees the sense in a girl's words," Jaqen admitted, pulling her attention away from her inner turmoil and back to the matter at hand. "Still, a man hopes a girl sees the sense in _his_ words as well. You will finish your task here _and_ you will return to a man unharmed. This means a girl should avoid needless risks."

"I do not like to think of you worrying for me. I am not afraid of Biro," the Cat assured her master, pronouncing Biro's name with the same look she might have had if she had tasted something rancid.

"There is a thing a man always says about a girl's courage and her sense. Do you recall it, child?" her master asked, looking at the Cat meaningfully.

She bristled at his calling her a _child_ and did not respond to his rhetorical query, but instead thought, _I am no little girl. I'm a demon masquerading as a little girl._ He gazed at her for a long moment, trying to puzzle out the sudden change of her expression, which had been scowling but suddenly looked… malevolent. Then he let the subject drop.

"A man has come to speak with you about your plan for this dead lord."

"Oh?" the girl asked, squirming beneath the sheet and thick coverlet of her bed, thinking, _Why is there such a thick coverlet? It's never cold enough to need it here._ In a demonstration of how useless she felt such heavy bedding was in the warm Braavosi climate, she tossed the coverlet aside and then turned over to face her master, drawing her sheet up over her chest. Jaqen watched her movements with a slightly furrowed brow and his look seemed serious. She began wonder what he might say next. What if there was some further complication to this already convoluted assignment? Might her master have some new layer to add to the challenge? _Perhaps the order had forgotten to mention some further inane detail required to fulfill the obligation they had accepted when they took Mattine's face in payment for Biro's death. Was the wealthy man now not only to be humiliated but also eaten by some of the many cats roaming the streets of Braavos? Perhaps Mattine had whispered to the Kindly Man that she desired the wealthy lord be shaved bald prior to his death. What further ridiculous requirements could the order place upon her shoulders for this one simple task?_

In her nervousness at awaiting her master's words, she squirmed some more, fluffing her pillow and twisting her sheet through her legs. _Mattine had not been wrong when she spoke with Atius Biro as his hand grazed her bare back; she really was quite warm._ She was finding it hard to get comfortable. Had she been honest with herself, she would have seen that some of her restlessness crept directly from her belly and the twisting therein. It only seemed to intensify when she heard her master's voice.

"Please stop writhing in your bed, lovely girl," the Lorathi uttered, sounding a little hoarse. "You rob a man of his concentration."

She felt silly and childish, caught squirming and restless in her bed, corrected like a naughty stripling who had annoyed his maester by wiggling and twitching through his heraldry lessons. The girl was embarrassed that her master was distracted by her behavior and had called her out about her fidgeting, and so soon after he had referred to her as a _child_. She did not realize that the Lorathi's inability to concentrate was not remotely related to any childishness on her part. It was just the opposite, in fact. Twisted in her sheets, wearing his blouse with the laces pulled open and the neckline askew, she was far too grown and tempting for his comfort. Had she been wearing her _own_ face just then... But no, he determined, it did not bear thinking about. There were important matters to discuss.

She quickly stilled her restive motions, biting her broken lip sheepishly and then hissing slightly at the pain she caused herself. A grimace appeared upon Mattine's face as she recalled the reason for her discomfort. _Atius would suffer,_ the apprentice vowed. The wealthy lord had just earned himself _two_ drops of the... _Grunting of Lys?_

Jaqen saw his lovely girl's pain and frowned even more deeply. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to push away his blooming desire to make Atius suffer intensely. _And_ his blooming desire to do other things as well; things much less sinister but every bit as _intense._

"A man has spoken to his sister," he began, opening his eyes and dropping his gaze to the floor. "She tells me that your brother has brought you the means for making the Tears of Lys."

"Well... yes," the apprentice conceded. "But..."

"This will not do, lovely girl," the master assassin chided, interrupting her explanation. "You know how carefully we must tread here in Braavos. This manse is within sight of the Sealord's own palace."

"I _know_ that, Jaqen, but I..."

"It is an effective poison, obviously, and no less than this wretch deserves, but still, you cannot use it."

"I know that," she told him flatly.

Her master looked up from the floor where he had apparently kept his eyes on his feet the entire time he spoke to the acolyte. He had his eyebrows raised slightly, giving her a questioning look, awaiting her elucidation.

"I didn't make Tears of Lys. I made a sort of version of it that I discovered accidentally," she told him. "It will have some mild... well, _comparatively_ mild belly effects but it won't eat the bowel away. It won't _kill_ him."

"Then why make it at all?" her master pondered out loud.

The girl sat up on her bed and grinned at him wickedly. He saw more than a trace of her true self in the gesture and he leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes once again and scrubbing at the guard's hair as she answered his question. Or, rather, as she did _not_ answer it.

"It's part of my plan," his apprentice assured him. "I'd rather not say more."

"Do you not trust a man with your secrets, lovely girl?" he purred, opening his eyes and turning his gaze upon her. The assassin's false eyes burned as his lips formed a small, teasing smile. _Mattine had never noticed before how comely was this household guard. She would have to pay more mind to him the next time they crossed paths to see if it was truly him that looked so... so roguishly handsome or if the look was solely influenced by the man who wore his face. She resolved to study the guard the next time she walked past his post at the garden door... unless Jaqen had killed him for his face._ Despite Jaqen's efforts, the girl fought to resist her master's charm and keep her secrets.

"You know more of my secrets than anyone else," the Cat replied, now feeling almost guilty for holding back. She was once again squirming, though this time under the intensity of the Lorathi's gaze. "But this... I just..."

Jaqen cocked his head and wondered at her hesitancy.

"What is it, lovely girl?" he murmured, leaning forward and watching her closely. He was intrigued by her struggle and the subtle play of emotions on her false face.

"It's just that I haven't had a chance to... be _independent_... on an assignment since you've returned. Everything I've done, I've done with prompting from you, or... oversight from you."

"That is not true," her mentor said, reminding her that she had dispatched Hellind with no interference on his part.

"But that was so simple, _Loric_ could have done it," the girl nearly whined. Hearing herself, she stopped short and drew her shoulders up a little straighter. She did not wish to give her master cause to call her a _child_ again. She ran her tongue lightly over Mattine's damaged lip and considered her words a moment before continuing. "I know it may seem stupid to you, but I just... I suppose I want to prove myself. I was able to deliver the gift to the ship's captain with his own knife and it seemed to... _impress_ the Kindly Man." What she did not say was that she wished to see that sort of recognition of her skills in her master's eyes. She longed to make him proud of her and did not want to share her plan because she had been hoping that she would be able to complete her task and explain the _how_ of it later, thus garnering her mentor's admiration. The apprentice craved Jaqen's approval.

 _You crave more than mere approval,_ the unwelcome voice snickered in her head.

 _Shut up,_ she growled internally, thinking she ought to clout the Bear until either he fell to the ground or she tired of hitting him. _Whichever came last._

"A man knows your capabilities, sweet girl. You need not prove yourself," he assured her, his gaze softening as he thought of the fierce child on the King's Road, and then later in Harrenhal. When had she ever received praise and recognition? On the rare occasions she spoke of her past in the North, she only ever seemed to recall being chastised and corrected for her lack of gentility, never admired for her fearlessness or her skill with a bow. Even in the House of Black and White, praise was a rare thing and it had taken her performing what was essentially an impossible feat to draw an admiring word and look from the principal elder. "The only proof a girl should concern herself with is that which will be required of her during her final trial."

"It has certainly been much on my mind," the Cat admitted. "But still, I must do this first."

"Just so. But a man would prefer a girl be quick about it."

"Ten days," she told him, then thought on it briefly and corrected herself. "Well, nine now, I suppose."

 _Nine days. Could she be in a wealthy man's house for nine days without enduring unspeakable abuse?_ Jaqen worried. Again, he left his face less-guarded than he ought, for she seemed to pull the thoughts straight from his head and sought to reassure him.

"If I titrate this... _potion_ correctly," she started, thinking that she really must settle on a name, "then Biro won't be comfortable enough to harass me anymore."

"This potion of your own devising?" her master questioned, not looking appeased.

"Yes," she said. "It should render Biro incapable of causing me much trouble."

"Hmm," he mused, allowing his eyes to drift to the floor again as he thought on her plan. _Or, at least, what little he knew of it._

Suddenly, the Cat bolted upright in her bed, exclaiming, "Oh!"

The excited utterance caused the Lorathi master to jerk his head up and pin her with his gaze, his eyes widening.

"I just remembered something!" the girl continued breathlessly. "When I was at the market with the Bear, I learned that the rat-faced boy was one of four who threw me into the canal!"

Expecting him to gasp or look shocked at her unanticipated revelation, she instead found _herself_ displaying shock when her master said, "A man knows."

" _What?_ How could _you_ know? I just found out myself!"

"The Westerosi told me."

" _He did?_ Why in the Seven bloody Hells would he tell _you…_ " she began, but then her voice trailed off as she recalled the Bear's words. _Sometimes the simplest explanation really is the answer._

"A man imagines the boy told him because he wished to live. A man had the boy by his throat and threatened him."

"Oh." That explanation was even simpler. Having once had Jaqen's hands tightening around her own throat, she knew how... _convincing_ her master could be. "Did you find out who the others were?"

"This matter is… _delicate_ ," the Lorathi told the Cat. "Let a man see to this."

"You're not going to tell me?"

"A girl has her secrets as well," he reminded her (and he sounded a little smug to her ear). Her master was shielding her but he knew that even if she understood that, the girl would not be satisfied. She deemed herself above the need for protection and trying to reason with her about this would only provoke further argument. He was not willing to allow her to talk him out of this one precaution.

"But my secrets don't directly concern _you_ ," she sniffed with discontent. She was just shy of a full pout, which amused her master greatly. It also made it easier for him to adhere to his resolve to say nothing on this matter until he had investigated further. He did not wish to needlessly alarm his apprentice.

"Lovely girl, everything about you _directly concerns_ a man."

As he spoke, he rose from the chair and walked the short distance to her door as if to leave. The girl found herself a little sad to see him going. It seemed he had only just arrived. The assassin wrapped his fingers around the handle and as he began to pull the door open, he stopped suddenly and turned to look at her over his shoulder.

"This potion of yours... This weakened Tears of Lys," the Lorathi began, "has a clever girl named it yet?"

"Hmm," the Cat thought, then raised her eyebrows quizzically and threw out, "Discomfort of Lys?"

Jaqen shook his false head at her and then narrowed his eyes a bit, a smirk slowly curving his lips.

"Ah, but it's so obvious, lovely girl," her mentor said, and when she gave him a confused look, he offered, " _Cat Gut_."

And with that, he was gone.

It wasn't until well after her master had left that the apprentice realized she had forgotten to tell him about the presence of his brother in the household.

 _Ah, well_ , she thought, _perhaps he already knew_ …

* * *

The subject of the breakfast conversation for Atius Biro's family seemed to be a continuation of the supper conversation as Lady Vorena and Lidia discussed the various details of the upcoming feast and the wealthy man ate heartily while occasionally nodding his approval to some suggested amendment to the plans. Gulls eggs in nests of wilted greens (the cupbearer frowned at the eggs and greens. Much more of these would interfere with her plan for Lord Atius. She would have to see what she could do about his diet) surrounded by a thick and spicy cream sauce; a jam of fish eggs spread upon flaky biscuits; stewed figs and small fish fried into crisps. No one commented upon the cupbearer's injured face and she showed no signs of discomfort as she filled their cups, paying special attention to the cup of her new master. _Two drops_ , she had promised him when she bit her damaged lip in the predawn darkness. The _Stark_ part of her was especially keen to _keep her word,_ for what was a Stark without her honor?

As Mattine handed her lord his cup, he glanced at her sideways, frowning slightly. This was his expression of disapproval for her mode of dress, she knew, as she wore one of the plain and demure serving gowns she had brought with her from the inn.

 _Stupid man,_ the Cat thought.

If the wealthy lord were less blind, he might see how his wife was made more comfortable by the cupbearer's change of costume. If he would not insist on throwing his infidelities in the Lady Vorena's face in her own home, he might find she tolerated them better. _That might have saved Hellind's life and saved the wealthy man the bit of his wealth that rested now in the coffers of the temple. Or, more likely, in the protected vaults of the Iron Bank of Braavos._ Ah, well. His marital problems and financial affairs were not the Cat's concern. _And shortly, neither would they be his._

The assassin's apprentice was doing her best to keep time in her head. By her estimation, nearly twenty minutes had passed since the wealthy man began consuming his refilled drink when the first signs of discomfort appeared upon his face. She noted his pained expression with practiced indifference but inside, there was a burgeoning feeling of delight dancing below the surface of her skin and she commanded herself to _stillness_ so that it would not show itself outwardly. She recognized it as the _joy of revenge_ , no matter how faint it was at this small jab at the odious lord.

The acolyte knew that as an instrument of Him of Many Faces, her practiced indifference should be _actual_ indifference and the only delight she should feel should be at the thought that she was advancing the cause of the order and moving closer to accomplishing her goal. She should feel no personal gratification at the discomfort of this dead man, but even the ache of her cheek seemed to dull as the delicious sensation of successfully exacting a modicum of retribution spread throughout her body. How much greater would the feeling be when she finally delivered Cersei Lannister to the Stranger? There was an insistent pull toward such an enticement that was difficult to ignore, despite her desire to enter the order as a sister and avowed servant of the House of Black and White.

The wealthy man clutched at his belly and his face paled a bit. He called for his cupbearer and one of the household guards to help him to his solar, telling his wife he needed to rest as something had upset his digestion. Lady Vorena nodded at him, commenting that he should perhaps not eat so heavily in the mornings, and then returned to her discussion with Lidia, saying that the girl could not attend the mummers' show today as she had asked because the dressmaker would be shortly at the manse for the girl's final fitting of her feast gown. The mummers could wait until the morrow.

 _Tomorrow, then,_ the Cat thought as she and the guard walked with Biro hunched over between them.

Lord Atius seemed to have forgotten his earlier disapproval of his cupbearer's dress. She had such beautiful skin and he could not for the life of him understand why she would wish to cover it with that drab, brown smock, he had thought before his belly began to trouble him, frowning at the girl. _Still so lovely_ , _despite the ugly clothes,_ he sighed inwardly, but he felt affronted when he gazed at her, as if she was purposefully hiding something from him. But that was before the wealthy man began to feel unsettled deep in his gut. He had devoured a very rich meal though rarely did such foods upset his digestion. _But he wasn't getting any younger_ , he supposed. Perhaps Vorena was right in insisting that he have greater care in what he consumed. Damn that woman. She did not wish him to enjoy pleasures of the flesh _or_ pleasures of the palate. If his wife had her way, there would be nothing left for him.

Now, as the guard and the beautiful cupbearer dressed in her plain servant's clothes escorted him to his solar, he thought only of his discomfort and was glad that the girl was there to help him, her dress be damned. Pain has a way of bringing into focus what is most important at any given moment. When they arrived at their destination, Mattine threw open the door and the guard assisted the grimacing lord to his low couch, settling him there against silken cushions that appeared similar to the ones piled in his gondola. Biro waved the man away as Mattine wet a cloth and placed it on his forehead. The wealthy man called for wine to settle his stomach.

"My lord," the girl began timidly, looking at him from her thick eyelashes, "if I may, I could brew you some tea. It is a ginger tea from Myr and has great soothing properties for the belly. Wine will only intensify your discomfort, I believe." _I'll make sure it does if you insist on it, my lord,_ she added mentally.

"Very well, just be quick, girl," Biro groaned and Mattine swept quickly toward the door. Just as she exited the room, she saw the wealthy man bolt up from his seat and then head toward the privy just off his solar in a trot and she allowed herself a small smile as she pulled the door closed behind her.

Once outside of the chamber, the cupbearer lifted her skirts and flew to her own cell, gathering her supplies. She then ran to the kitchen, barked something at the cook about making a tea for Lord Atius' ailment, and found that her actions were being watched over by the familiar Faceless guard—the handsome man. _That was very, very good._ Not that any of her ingredients were poisonous. They were all actually things that were good for brewing tea, making it flavorful and even somewhat effective for the trouble the wealthy man was experiencing. However, anyone very skilled in herb lore might also note that each ingredient had another property in common, and combining them all, while delicious, was like to lead to… _other_ problems over time.

She had dried feverfew from the waif's stores and she crushed the leaves and petals, dropping it into the small, boiling pot of water the cook had indicated she might use. To that, she added some bits she scraped from the ginger and licorice roots she had purchased in the market and as they began to roll in the boiling water and give it color, she added dashes of the cinnamon and turmeric she had bought from the spicer.

"That has a pleasant smell," the cook commented in passing. "You must give me the recipe."

"Certainly," Mattine replied nonchalantly. _Just don't cut yourself after you drink it._ Then she added three whole cloves the cook had in a small jar and squeezed the juice of a few slices of lemon into the mixture. The scent was divine.

 _Jaqen,_ the Cat thought, and then shook her head slightly. _Concentrate, idiot._ To the entire boiling pot, she added a tiny drop of the dilute Sweetsleep she had taken from the hiding place under her mattress before she left her cell that morning. Her sleight of hand had improved so much over the years that she felt confident no one but another master of the skill would even guess at her action, but still, she felt relieved that her preparation of the tea was being overseen by the handsome man. Of course, even if she had been forced to drink the concoction herself by someone suspicious of her, the worst that would happen is that she would feel very relaxed, possibly even drowsy. Still, it would not do to be caught with the vial of Sweetsleep (or _Cat Gut_ ) on her person. She placed the small vial back in her pocket, next to the other.

 _That is another reason this dress is superior to the ruined one,_ the girl thought. _Pockets._

Once her brew was done, she ladled it into a pouring pot made of a dried and glazed clay, a piece of plain pottery, using a loose linen cloth over the mouth of the thing to catch the bits of leaves and roots and prevent them from getting into the pot. She placed the filled crockery on a tray along with a cup and then fished a shallow dish out of the cupboard that she filled with almonds. _Almonds were just the thing_ , she decided. _No more greens. Or eggs._

Mattine carried the tray from the kitchen, earning a curious look from the handsome man's false face, but she ignored it and continued on to Lord Atius' solar. She found him once again sprawled on his couch, groaning slightly.

"My lord, your tea," she announced, setting the tray on the large, round table where he sometimes took meals when he was too busy to come to the small hall. She poured a cup and then brought it to him. He told her that he did not think he could stomach it but she assured him that if he did, he would feel much better, so he made to sit up. She set his cup on the table at the side of the couch and assisted him, getting him into an upright position. She then gave him his cup and gently bade him drink as she returned to the large table for the dish of almonds. The man eyed the nuts suspiciously and the girl laughed her tinkling laugh and said that they would help counteract whatever it was that he had ingested that did not sit well with him. She rattled off some convincing-sounding nonsense about almonds absorbing bad humors and then pushed the dish toward him.

The cupbearer stayed at her lord's side and fussed over him as he imbibed her brew. The girl casually remarked how her mother had once said that green foods were not so gentle on the sensitive belly and if he liked, she could inform the cook not to serve him anymore of greens or gulls' eggs until after he had been recovered for a few days. The man assented to her suggestion almost absentmindedly. After half an hour had passed, he admitted that he did feel much better (partly, the girl knew, due to the ginger and cinnamon, and partly due to the short duration of action of her _Cat Gut_ ). Biro then stifled a yawn and told her girl that he felt he might need a rest to recover from his small attack. She nodded to him and said she would leave him another cup of tea, just to be sure he was adequately recovered.

"Please drink it, my lord," the girl urged with heavy concern lacing her voice. "I do not like to think of you suffering again."

"Thank you, my dear," he said and he sounded almost gracious as he grabbed a handful of almonds from the dish and began chewing them. His color was back to normal and he did not seem to suffer at all now. By the Cat's calculations, the effects of her concoction had lasted just under an hour. When Mattine leaned over the table nearest her lord where his cup now sat and refilled it, Biro reached his arm out and wrapped it around her waist, his fingers digging into her side as he pulled her into his lap. The wealthy man finished popping the almonds into his mouth, chewing casually as he placed his now-empty palm against her injured cheek, saying that she was a very beautiful girl and rubbing over her wounds somewhat roughly with his thumb. The Cat turned her false doe eyes upon the man and winced slightly at the pain he was causing her, as it was obvious he meant for her to feel it and she wished to oblige him.

"When I have rested, I shall expect you back here," the wealthy man told her, pressing slightly harder against the discolored and sore spot where Mattine's cheekbone was most prominent. His meaning was clear. _Shy away from my advances again and you will know exactly what to expect._ She nodded at him and her look was a mixture of submission and fright. This brought a smile to the lord's lips and he pushed her off of his lap and laid back once again against his silken cushions, muttering something about how much like Hellind she was. The cupbearer stood and walked to the table where the tray sat. As the girl gathered up the teapot and tray to return them to the kitchen, she found herself wishing she had used a less-dilute form of Sweetsleep.

* * *

As the Lorathi walked in silence next to his master through the courtyard garden, his mind was filled with thoughts of Mattine's broken lip and bruised face. The elder himself seemed lost in his thoughts, though what they concerned, the younger man could not say. For a while, the only sounds were the splashing of the fountain, the twittering of birds in the lemon trees, and the rustling of the leaves and tall, ornamental grasses in the warm breeze. But then, the principal elder addressed his brother and the other sounds faded to the background.

"Perhaps you should tell me what troubles you, brother."

Jaqen sighed very slightly and then answered, "This assignment my apprentice has undertaken may have... unforeseen consequences."

"The assignment you pushed for me to allow her to take, you mean?"

The Kindly Man's amused tone was not lost on his former apprentice. Jaqen reminded the elder that he had secured a place for the girl at the _inn,_ not the _manse_ , and at the inn, she was under the protection of the innkeeper whereas at the manse, she was surrounded by dozens of armed guards who bore her no allegiance and she had no one to rely on but herself for protection.

"Oh, I see you are not entirely aware of the circumstance of your apprentice's situation," the Kindly Man remarked mildly. "Did she not tell you that she was under the protection of a Faceless master?"

The Lorathi's response to his master's words was a mixture of confusion and pique. _Of course nothing remained hidden from the principal elder for long, but he had only returned from the manse a spare three hours earlier and already, his master seemed aware not only of the visit itself but of the content of his conversation with his apprentice._ As the younger man thought on his master's words, realization washed over him. _His brother... the one his lovely girl referred to as the handsome man... He had missed the council meeting and the principal elder had remarked upon the man's inability to see to his own apprentice just then, assigning the task to Jaqen in his stead. This must be the brother in the household of the wealthy man, as he was the only Faceless master not accounted for._

As the Lorathi began to piece together all of the evidence he should have seen that indicated this wrinkle in the task his apprentice had been assigned, he recalled the principal elder's words to him after the most recent council meeting. _I am sure that were your brother in your shoes, he would devote himself without question to the Westerosi girl,_ his master had said, and at the time, the assassin had believed the elder was speaking merely hypothetically. Jaqen did not display the frown he felt forming within but burned to know the true intent behind his master's assignment of another Faceless master to the manse.

 _And the girl knew her handsome man was there, if the elder was to be believed. Yet, she had said nothing to him... Was this the secret she wished to keep from her master? Was she colluding with a man's brother to bring about the end of the abusive lord? Or was there something else she did not wish a man to know about her relationship with her handsome man?_ The track his thoughts were taking disturbed him far too greatly for Jaqen to allow them to continue, at least in the presence of the principal elder, and so he asked a question instead.

"Is the gift for this wealthy man of such great importance that two assassins are needed, so that if one should fail, the other can complete the task? Or does an elder know that the manse itself is so dangerous with its retinue of guards that one or the other of the temple's servants are likely to fall?"

"You mistake me, brother," the Kindly Man chuckled. "Please, do not worry so much. It seems to me that you have been... _very tense_ lately. You are not like yourself at all."

The elder had no idea how true were the words he spoke. _Or did he?_

"A man has always been serious about the work of the order."

"Serious, yes," his master agreed. "But not _anxious._ The Many-Faced god does not wish to see you so... _distressed._ And neither do I, brother."

"A man is not distressed," Jaqen assured the elder, though he was not sure he meant it, "though he finds it difficult to understand why so much concerning his own apprentice seems to be _purposefully hidden_ from him."

"Why, brother, after we spoke last about your misgivings about your apprentice's task inside of Biro's manse, I thought you would be pleased that I sent her some protection."

 _This was most unexpected,_ the younger man thought.

"So, the master is not present to assist the girl in her delivery of the gift..."

"Oh, no. I have full confidence in the girl's _creativity_ and competence," the elder said, smiling slightly. "He is there merely to ensure that she comes to no real harm during her stay."

The Lorathi thought he should feel relieved at his master's words, yet he did not. The thought of his brother being assigned to stand guard over his lovely girl gave rise to more questions than had just been answered. Was the arrangement truly in response to Jaqen's own concerns? Or was there some other purpose the Kindly Man had for protecting the girl? His sister had said essentially that the Cat was the principal elder's favorite, valued above the others. Or... was it possible that her safety had been... _purchased?_ Protection details were not the specialty of the order, but they had been contracted on occasion, when the gold was right. And he still could not understand why his lovely girl had not told him of his brother's presence in the manse herself. _Perhaps she does not yet know he is there,_ Jaqen reasoned and then he spoke to the elder, countering the older man's assertion about the usefulness of his brother in this assigned task.

"If he is meant to ensure that the girl comes to no harm, he is not a very effective choice, it seems."

"Oh, brother, a blow to the cheek of a Faceless Man is hardly serious harm, no matter how beautiful that cheek may be, wouldn't you agree?"

 _What would the elder consider serious harm?_ Jaqen wondered, discomfited by the statement as well as his master's more complete knowledge of the girl's circumstance than his own. The Lorathi had long since given up wondering about how his master gleaned his intelligence. He assumed his _handsome_ brother had managed to leave the manse long enough to make a report at some point after the incident yesterday. What he _did_ wonder about, though, was his master's choice of candidate for this task.

"A man would have gladly fulfilled this role," Jaqen told the elder. "With the trials approaching, a man's brother was not left to train his own apprentice while a man's apprentice was removed from his tutelage and given over to the protection of another. This seems strange."

"Does it?" the Kindly Man replied with disinterest. "I have always thought it rather strange how _possessive_ some masters can be of... _certain acolytes."_

The Lorathi gave a mildly surprised look at his master's words. Though still slightly subtle, this was the most overt accusation the principal elder had ever made regarding his relationship with his apprentice. Though all masters aided in the training of all acolytes, it was generally accepted that an acolyte would be primarily trained by the master who had recruited him, or, if he had made his way to the temple on his own, then he would be trained primarily by whichever master had agreed to the task. These relationships were respected and it was not strange or suspect for masters and apprentices to spend inordinate amounts of time together and to form bonds. Jaqen had formed such a bond with his own master. It was perhaps a bit more delicate of a situation when the masters and apprentices were of different sexes, a rare occurrence, to be sure, but as the Lorathi had chosen Arya Stark (and given her a new destiny) and as the waif had no interest in taking on a protégé at the time of the girls arrival in the temple (during the Lorathi's early absence), Jaqen's relationship with the girl would not be seen as anything _unusual_ by the other members of the order.

_So what did the principal elder see that would lead him to accuse the younger man of possessiveness? And were the words mere observation, or did Jaqen only imagine the tone of warning they seemed to carry?_

* * *

_**Wrapped Around Your Finger-**_ The Police (oh, so appropriate)

 _ **Take Me Down to the Infirmary**_ **-** Cracker


	39. Chapter 39

When Lord Atius did not show in the small hall for the midday meal, Mattine had high hopes that it was because the diluted Sweetsleep was proving to be more effective than she had initially believed it would be. The ladies of the household were busy twittering to each other about the resplendent creation that was to be Lidia's gown for her nameday feast and betrothal announcement. The seamstress had left only a short time before and her work was all anyone seemed to be talking about.

 _Jade and azure silk,_ the cupbearer overheard Lidia gushing, _the colors of the sea!_

The Cat heard Lady Vorena and her daughter deep in conversation but they might as well have been speaking in some ancient form of Ghiscari for all she understood of their babble about partlets and giornea and embroidered kirtles and vestes and slashed sleeves and costly silk damask and veils... On and on they went. It was a dialect she did not comprehend; one area where her sister had always excelled but one she herself had lacked the discipline and desire to study.

 _Honestly, mastering Dothraki was easier than trying to decipher the language of fashion,_ the girl groaned inwardly.

Half-way through the meal, when Biro still had not shown up to take his place at the head of the table, Lady Vorena sent Mattine to fetch him from his solar. The girl had hoped to find him passed out on his couch, snoring heavily, so that she could tiptoe away and report to his wife that she was unable to arouse him and he obviously needed his rest, thus delaying the inevitable tangle that would erupt when he tried to have his way with his young and innocent cupbearer and she refused to let him. She had nearly settled on a plan that involved the employment of her Lorathi master's paralytic trick of Asshai' but had not yet worked out how she could convince the wealthy man that it was some sort of natural attack of his nerves rather than merely a purposeful attack by his new servant upon his person. The Cat would have to solve this problem if she intended to remain in the manse for nine more days and not fail at her mission.

As she swiftly stole down the passageway and approached the door in silence, the girl heard no noise coming from the solar. Not wishing to disturb the dead man if he were still sleeping, the assassin's apprentice employed her cat-like stealth and quietly slipped into the room, looking first to the couch upon which she had left Biro. She was less than pleased at finding that he was no longer resting there. She then looked to Lord Atius' desk but he was not there either. The Cat expelled a great sigh.

_Where had he got off to?_

"Mattine," came Lord Atius' voice and she turned quickly to see that the man was on the far side of the room, peering through the large and open door that led to the balcony overlooking the gardens. She had not seen him immediately as he was almost completely hidden behind the heavy drapery of a costly gold material which hung over the doorway.

 _Good and awake,_ _damn him,_ the cupbearer thought, cursing inwardly. He was a big man and the effects of Sweetsleep were certainly dose-dependent. _Two drops next time. That should last longer without giving a suspiciously sudden onset of sleep._

"Yes, my lord?" the girl answered, sounding timid.

"Have you seen the view of the gardens from here?"

"I have seen the gardens, my lord," the cupbearer answered carefully. "I arrived here first through the harbor gate and then walked through the gardens on the way to the market."

"Ah, yes, but that is not what I asked, is it?" Biro queried, his voice taking on a harder edge.

"No, my lord."

"No, that is not what I asked, or no, you have not seen this view of the garden?" the wealthy man asked, a trace of amusement now in his tone.

 _He seems to enjoy the torment,_ she noted. _He likes the idea of trapping Mattine and making her squirm as he corrects her. He likes the idea that she is a little afraid of him._

"Well… both, my lord."

"I thought as much. Come here, girl." Biro had stepped from behind the drape and motioned to his servant, a not-so-subtle demand for her obedience.

 _Seven bloody Hells,_ the Cat thought, struggling not to grit her teeth or set her jaw as she approached the man. She made her way toward him, as he had commanded, and there was purposeful trepidation in her step. She employed a calculated wrinkle of her brow, just between the eyes, even as she widened those eyes. She liked to imagine she had even willed them to be a little shiny. Her breath, she made slightly shallow. She thought perhaps Biro might be persuaded by Mattine's innocence and naiveté to rethink his intentions, at least for a moment. When she was within an arm's length of the wealthy man, he reached out and drew her to him, almost gently, which seemed out of character for him. He guided her movements, placing her in front of him and turning her so that she was looking through the door herself, and over the ornate railing of the balcony to the gardens below.

"Are they not beautiful, my gardens?" he asked her softly, slipping his one soft hand around her waist, using his arm to haul her to him as he used his other hand to move her mass of curls away from one side of her neck.

"They are, my lord," she agreed, commanding herself not to stiffen and also not to pull the blade from her corset and make a quick end to the man as he placed his nose behind her ear and inhaled deeply, relishing the scent that reminded him so much of another; the faint scent of the same perfumed oils Hellind had used in her own hair. The dutiful cupbearer tried to dissuade Lord Atius from his present course by explaining why she was in the room. "My lord, the Lady Vorena sent me to fetch you to the midday meal. She is most concerned for your health."

"Mmm," he responded and the girl was unsure if he had even paid attention to what it was that she had just said to him. He dug his fingers into her middle and then she felt his lips, warm and horribly moist on her false neck. Mattine gasped and then repeated her mandate from the wealthy man's wife. Her voice was slightly tremulous.

"My lord, I was to come and fetch you to your meal. You must eat... After your spell this morning..."

Lord Atius pulled his mouth away from its assault on his cupbearer's neck, impatient with her interruptions, and sighed deeply, signaling his displeasure. Saying nothing of his wife and the midday meal, the wealthy man twisted and wound all of Mattine's long hair around his forearm and his fingers, yanking her head further over, leaning it to one side and exposing her long neck even more fully. A growl was forming on her lips, but she held it back, thinking, _Ten thousand servant girls in ten thousand households across the world are enduring worse than this right now. His time will come but until then, hold yourself together._ As soon as she thought it, the acolyte's resolve to remain unaffected and check her temper was tested when Biro's fingers left the spot on her belly where they had only just been clutching and digging and instead began to yank at the laces which held closed her gown's bodice.

"This dress is so ugly, Mattine," the man muttered with distaste, his breathing becoming heavy. "Why would you choose it when you have a much nicer one at your disposal?"

 _A much nicer one that doesn't have crisscrossing laces tied all the way up to the neck that can be tightened and knotted, you mean,_ the Cat thought, fingers twitching a bit, longing for a blade.

"My lord, the wine from yesterday... it stained my gown," she explained hesitantly, sounding as sorrowful about it as she could manage while he was grasping at her clothes.

"This one, even clean, is _worse_ than the other with its stain. And these laces, so high on the neck! My dear, you are out of fashion," he breathed. "They're so tight; I fear the dress may tear when I loosen them for you. You won't mind though, I'm sure. I'll replace it with something more _suitable._ Would you like that?"

He did not wait for her answer as he tugged harder on the laces and succeeded in loosening the bodice enough that he was satisfied for the moment. He slipped his fingers roughly over the top of her now gaping neckline, brushing against the smooth flesh just beneath her collarbone. The Cat fought against her disgust so that she might drift into stillness. _Calm as still water. S_ he needed to concentrate on executing her plan to extricate herself from this situation. She was working out how she might slip her hand over her shoulder without making Biro suspicious of her. The girl would have to blindly locate that certain place behind the wealthy man's collar bone so that she could utter the words that would render him insensible and immobile for a time. She figured she could weave a convincing tale later about the cause of his collapse but before she could put her plan into action, there was a loud, insistent knocking which echoed throughout the solar and then a familiar voice was speaking through the closed door.

"Pardon me, my lord, but the Lady Vorena is most anxious to speak with you. She said to tell you that she would be happy to come to your solar if you did not feel up to joining her at table."

It was the Faceless master masquerading as the wealthy man's sellsword bodyguard who spoke and when he did, Biro gave a deep growl of frustration. He again yanked the girl's head over by her hair, this time more painfully, drawing a yelp from her. He seemed to smile a little at that before running his tongue from her shoulder to her ear and then he released his cupbearer unceremoniously from his arms.

"Yes, I see," was all the lustful lord called to Owen, giving Mattine a hard glance before he swiftly departed the room, robes swirling around his ankles, leaving the door to the solar wide open. The handsome man strolled through casually, as if he had nothing better to do just then and was merely taking in the sights.

The two servants of the House of Black and White stood looking at one another for a moment before the Cat began to straighten her gown and fasten her laces, trying not to dwell on the fact that she could still feel the disgusting lord's fingers digging into the flesh of her middle and beneath her collarbone and that the wet trail left by his tongue on her neck was cooling and sending shivers through her such as she might experience when waking from a particularly hideous nightmare.

"It is not every day that I see a wolf being cornered by her prey," the handsome man remarked blithely as he turned his hand back and forth in front of his face and inspected the state of his fingernails. He seemed to find them satisfactory and dropped his hand to his swordbelt. "Was that part of your plan, child?"

She scowled at him but rather than answer his question, she asked one of her own.

"Why did you do that? I thought you weren't supposed to help me."

"Help you?" he asked, giving a convincing rendition of confusion. "I don't know what you mean. I was helping Lady Vorena. She asked after her lord husband."

"Then I suppose the timing of your interruption was merely a _fortuitous_ coincidence," the girl remarked with barely concealed sarcasm.

"Just so," the Faceless master agreed. He turned on his heel and moved across the floor with more grace than a broken down sellsword had a right to demonstrate. Just before he left the room, he surprised her by saying, "Meet me in the garden tonight, after all are asleep."

And then he was gone, leaving no indication that he had even just been there.

Faceless masters were exceedingly good at that.

* * *

The Cat had begun to love Lidia's nameday feast more than she had loved any celebration she had ever been involved with in her life. First, it gave her the opportunity she needed to expose and humiliate her intended victim in the most perfect way possible, and for the moment at least, it seemed to be keeping the wealthy man too busy for him to try to put his hands up her skirts. Lady Vorena had engaged her husband in a discussion of the details and when he protested that the planning of feasts was not his domain, his wife had shrugged slyly and made some mention of how he had only to free up the purse strings and she would trouble him no longer. Though Lord Atius was wealthy (almost embarrassingly so), he was a man that had worked hard to increase his fortune and felt dread at the thought of parting with more of his wealth than was necessary, at least so soon after paying off a large debt to a certain mysterious order who had handled some rather delicate _business_ for him very recently.

The cupbearer was allowed to finish her duties with the supper and then retire to her chambers, leaving Biro to the insistent hectoring of his wife and daughter. It was early yet, and the Cat decided to get what rest she could before she met with the Faceless sellsword in the wealthy man's gardens. She was feeling the lack of sleep from her late night concocting poisons in the kitchen and wanted to be alert for whatever it was the handsome man had in store for her. She wondered if they might be taking another trip in the wealthy man's gondola, perhaps even heading across to Ragman's and then through the canals to the temple. _Might she see Jaqen tonight?_

The girl shook her head at her own folly. If the handsome man even intended to take her to the temple (and why would he?), she would be just as likely to see the Bear or the waif or even the Kindly Man as her own master. Why was Jaqen's face the first one to show in her mind?

 _You know_ _why,_ the little voice insisted, and she noted with alarm that her little voice bore an uncomfortable likeness to her own, sounding much more like a combination of the Cat and Arya Stark than it had previously.

The girl stuffed her thoughts of seeing Jaqen down into the overflowing place where all the things she did not wish to consider lived. She vaguely wondered how much more she could cram into that overflowing space before everything just flew out, bursting forth like a great, coiled spring finally released. Despite the tension in her gut and the pounding in her heart as she denied herself permission to think about her master just then, the girl did finally manage to drift off to sleep. But the sleep was not to be a restful one, for she found herself once again in the cold crypts of Winterfell, looking up at her lord father, his face marked with the dancing light and shadow cast by the guttering torches that lined the grey stone walls. She was once again wearing her heavy, frozen crown of Valyrian steel roses, her hair twined around the icy blooms, tangled in the thorny blades.

"My grey daughter," Lord Eddard said to his child, and his eyes were hers, twin maelstroms of ash; eyes both bottomless and full, exhibiting an impossible mixture of sorrow and fury, all at once. "Come home."

"Father, I cannot," Arya said, and her voice had the heavy sound of all the anguish of the North, whole and entire, and it carried with it the dreadful weight of a million silent screams. When she spoke, her words felt like the mournful howling of a wolf escaping her lips; a lament wrenched from deep within her and pushed forth painfully into the cold and the dark of the stillness beneath the castle in which she was born.

When she breathed in, the air she consumed stabbed at her insides like so many tiny needles kissing her lungs with their cruel tips and when she breathed out, the small, frozen clouds that appeared before her lips cracked and shattered liked glass, raining slender shards upon the dark stones of the crypt floor, the sounds of destruction echoing in her ears. She could hardly bear it. She then felt a gritty, piercing pain that started at her brow and crept down her temples with cool, liquid fingers that slowly hardened and seared her flesh. Grimacing, the girl reached her hands up to her face to and touched the wetness there, feeling it freeze beneath her fingertips. These were the long streaks of the red, trailing tears that ran from the stinging bites of the steel thorns jutting from her icy crown. The blood traced its languid path down her pale cheek, collecting slowly until each drop froze and fell, like rubies leaping from her jaw to the fanning and dragging skirts of her silvery-frosted gown.

"Arya Stark!" her father thundered, his patience at its end. His eyes, which had been so dark in the dim light of the crypts, suddenly blazed and burned hot like coals, the radiating heat from them causing the scattered, sanguine rubies to melt and turn into tiny crimson pools that soaked into Arya's skirts. The delicately arranged ice-stars which had been her only ornamentation were now interspersed between comets of blood in a new pattern that was both beautiful and frightening, just like the girl who wore it. "Do not forget who you are!"

"I am no one, father," she said miserably, looking around the chamber and down the endless corridors at the vast darkness, her expression forlorn. "There is nothing for me here anymore. I am no one."

"You are _my grey_ _daughter_ ," he insisted in a precise cadence, leaning slowly forward from his seat atop his sepulcher, "and my winter child. You belong to the North!"

Lord Stark's flinty expression mimicked the stern look upon the faces of all the statues of all the Kings of Winter which graced the tops of countless tombs in the echoing crypts. His grey eyes bore into Arya and she turned from him, unable to endure his judgment for her weakness; afraid of the verdict he would reach when he saw who she had become, and who she was no longer.

Her movement had caused her to face Lyanna's tomb and she saw her aunt's resting place only a few steps from where she stood now. The frosted stars upon her skirt sent streaks of ice clawing and scrabbling across the worn stones of the floor upon which she trod; upon which Ghost padded toward her, even now, approaching her side in silence, sitting on his haunches facing the same direction as she. Arya cast her eyes down and watched the silvery-blue crystals snake and weave their way from the hem of her skirt to Lyanna's tomb, then climb it like rapidly growing vines, trailing upwards toward the statue that represented her aunt but looked just like the niece who now stood before it.

As Arya and Ghost looked on, the creeping ice formed a familiar starry pattern over the skirt of the statue, mirroring the look of Arya's frozen gown. Once the pattern of ice was complete, red spots abruptly appeared on Lyanna's hard skirt, bursting into existence, one after another, mimicking the look of the droplets of blood, now thawed, which decorated the dress worn by the woman Lord Stark had called his _grey daughter_. Clad now in red and silvery-white, blood and ice, the two women peered at one another; one seeing but not understanding and one blinded by both stone and death.

Ghost arose to his full height and crossed the short distance to Lady Lyanna's tomb. The immense, silent wolf began to lick at the ice crystals that had climbed the stone, melting them with the heat of his rough tongue. Arya reached out to him, burying her hand in his fur, and he ceased his movements, turning his head to look at her. When he did, the girl saw that his red eyes had changed and were now as grey as her own; Stark grey eyes. In those eyes, she saw her brother. She saw _Jon_.

 _We are here for a reason, little sister,_ she heard from somewhere deep inside of her. Or him. She wasn't sure... Arya withdrew her hand from the wolf's coat, gasping.

"The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword," her father's voice said from behind her right shoulder. She whirled and looked at him, feeling unjustly persecuted by his words.

" _Swing the sword? Swing the sword?"_ the girl cried indignantly, almost hysterically. Her weighted crown tugged harshly at her hair as she strode over to her father, pulling her heavy skirts and dragging sleeves behind her. She looked up at him, high above her head, sitting stiff and straight atop his tomb, as if it were a throne or a seat of power; as if he were the King in the North; as if he ruled over the winter. Her face pinched and she glared up at Lord Stark.

_The dead do not rule, father, they only feed the worms. And plague my dreams._

"All I _do_ is swing the sword!" Arya cried, angry tears forming in the corners of her eyes, freezing before they could fall, and her lashes became decorated with the tiny diamonds. "All I _do_ is carry out the sentence!"

"You do not judge, though. You do not judge!" he roared. "Are you a headsman? Are you the king's justice? Are you _Ilyn Payne?"_

She clutched at her heart, feeling as if it had suddenly frozen solid in the penetrating cold of the crypt, and stepped back from him as he hurled the insult. _Ilyn Payne?_ How could he say such a thing!

"I shall _kill_ Ilyn Payne!" Arya hissed. "I am no headsman, father! I am the ghost of Harrenhal. I am the Faceless shadow that steals in and strikes without warning. I am _no one._ I serve no king! I serve no one but _Death!_ "

"Aye, girl, you are no headsman, but neither are you a ghost. You are my grey daughter. _The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword._ Come home, child."

"I am no headsman," the girl mumbled, sitting up in her bed. Her cell was dark and it took her a moment to realize she was no longer in the cold crypts of Winterfell but was in her warm chamber in Atius Biro's manse. _And_ she was due to meet a Faceless master in the garden. She dug at her bleary eyes with the heels of her hands and blew out a breath, shaking off the strange sensation she had been left with after her dream. _Only a dream,_ the Cat determined. _It does not matter._

Not knowing what the handsome man had in store for her, she slipped out of Mattine's plain dress and pulled on the one pair of breeches she brought with her to the wealthy man's house and then slipped Jaqen's favorite shirt over her head. _It was only practical--the looseness allowed for freedom of movement and she knew not what she would be doing._ She found a leather tie and pulled all of Mattine's abundant hair back behind her. Her one blade, she tucked into a strap at her wrist and then she left her cell and headed for the gardens. As she passed through the dense grove of fruit trees, a voice called out to her from the heavy shadows.

"Hello, little wolf," she heard from deep in the darkness of the grove, near the spot the sellsword had first hissed _valar morghulis_ in her ear, revealing himself as Faceless. She followed the voice to the middle of the dark grove and saw the faint outline of the familiar guard leaning against a tree.

"Well..." the Cat started.

"Well, I have heard that you're working on a new sword technique. It's important to solidify new skills or else you risk losing them."

"You've _heard_?" she laughed. "Don't you mean you've _seen_?"

He smirked, which she sensed as much as saw in the heavy darkness under the trees, and replied, "Just so."

He tossed her a blade, then another, both of which she caught, noting that the weight of the steel felt good in her hands. Before she could ask the Faceless master anything, the Cat saw that he was swinging his own sword at her and she had to block his powerful blow hurriedly, not hitting it as she would have liked but avoiding taking the brunt of it where it was aimed, at her shoulder. She jumped back, trying to gain her bearings but had almost no time as the handsome man pressed her and sent a flurry of cuts and blows at her. She almost cursed at him, ready to declare that it wasn't very sporting of him to attack her unannounced, but then she could easily imagine Jaqen's laugh if she had dared use such an excuse with _him_ , certain he would say, _Do all of a girl's enemies announce their attacks? How marvelous!_ in his Lorathi-accented purr. And so she did not speak, but merely grunted with effort as she blocked blow after blow, trying to find her balance. After a time, when she began to feel the rhythm of the fight deep inside of her, she was able to push back and then go on the attack. Soon after that, _she_ was pressing _the master_ and he made an appreciative comment as he moved back in the direction from which they had just dueled.

"You really are most natural in your swordplay," the handsome man remarked and his voice was strong, not sounding remotely winded. "How much training did you have before you came to us, girl?"

"Just over a year," the Cat told him, slashing at him from an angle with both swords held in parallel. "But it was training received from the finest swordsman in Braavos, so I think it counts for more."

"Yes, your Syrio Forel," he replied. "I have heard you speak of him before."

"Just so," the girl replied, mimicking the handsome man's typically Braavosi speech pattern. She aimed a cut at the Faceless master's arm and he ducked gracefully and spun away from her. "So, now you know who I aspire to be like."

"Forel? Not your master?" the man asked in a mildly surprised tone, jabbing at her middle only to have his blade turned away with her bastard sword. It weighed her arm down slightly, but she was getting stronger with it and it no longer caused her muscles to burn after a few minutes of use. "But Forel was a water dancer."

"He was," the apprentice agreed. "The finest water dancer who ever lived. So?"

"So, _this_ isn't water dancing," he pointed out as she aimed a cut at him with each sword, one after the other, forcing him to retreat to avoid being struck. She couldn't see the handsome man well enough to say for sure, but she liked to think he was sweating with his exertion, though his voice was steady and betrayed nothing. She felt fine. _Very fine indeed._ The Faceless master continued, "This is a bastardization of water dancing of which I am not quite certain Syrio Forel would approve..."

That gave her pause. His words were distracting enough to the girl that she only saw his blow too late and her parry was ineffective. He turned his edge so that she received a sound slap against her thigh with the flat of his sword. She wondered if the wealthy man managed to hike her skirts up past mid-thigh, would he question her about her bruise?

"Ow!" the girl growled, thrusting at him with her bastard blade in frustration. He easily moved aside and her energy was wasted. _Calm down_ , she told herself. _Calm as still water... Stillness..._

The sellsword and the cupbearer took turns pressing one another, pushing forward a few steps only to retreat back over the same ground, back and forth, while the Cat considered the master's assertion about Syrio.

"I think Syrio would be proud," she finally decided as they danced around the trees. The two swordsmen engaged in some back and forth with a tree between them, serving as both shield and obstruction.

"Oh?"

"His lessons weren't just about a water dancer's technique. They were about the true seeing and mastering fear and... _feeling things in your gut_." As she spoke, she felt the internal stillness she had been seeking descend upon her and then it was as if every inch of her skin was feeling and sensing and _seeing_. In the darkness beneath the fruit trees, she sensed the handsome man's next blow, heard the air parting before his blade, and knew the perfect counter to it. Time almost seemed at a standstill for her as she moved just one half-step back and pivoted on her one foot, turning in a complete circle. The blade of the handsome man missed her by the space of a hair, failing to rake across her chest as the arc would have dictated and instead caressing only the air in the empty space where she had just stood. As she completed her circle, feeling as if she was moving with excruciating slowness (the action was actually so fast as to render her nearly a blur), she brought both swords around together in a slightly crossed arrangement with just an inch of space separating their tips. Just as she did, she almost thought she heard her father's voice, an echo of a memory of her dream.

 _Swing the sword,_ he said.

Into the slightly open steel mouth of her crossed blade tips, she threaded the handsome man's sword as it completed its arc and then trapped it between her steel edges. The momentum of her spinning motion arrested the action of her opponent and wrenched the sword out of his hand savagely. He was disarmed.

There was almost complete silence in the grove, interrupted only by the heavy breathing of both swordsmen, and then the handsome man uttered but one word.

"How?"

"It may be a bastardization of a respected technique," she answered, "but it's no less effective."

"Just so," he agreed, and then mused, almost as if to himself, "Very effective. Imagine mastering both this technique and the pulling of thoughts from an opponent's mind. Such skill would make you... _unstoppable_."

She wasn't sure what to say to that. The handsome man had always seemed mostly indifferent to her training (and to _her_ ) and yet, here he sounded almost... awestruck. What did it mean?

"Why are you really here?" the Cat demanded suddenly. The master laughed at her audacity and took her swords from her hands.

"Why do you think I am here?"

"If I knew that, I wouldn't ask," she replied irritably.

The handsome man laughed again, and then turned away from her and started back toward the garden door of the manse with their swords. He turned to look at her over his shoulder and told her he would keep the steel but that he would expect her every night, so that she could practice, and he intended to make the sparring more of a challenge for her next time.

 _Bloody hells,_ she thought, _that wasn't challenging? I had one lucky strike!_

"I'm sure your master expects you to keep up your lessons in his absence," he threw out as he continued up the path, leaving her alone in the grove. She did not argue. Crossing blades with the Faceless master had filled her with the closest thing to happiness she had felt since entering the wealthy man's house. With a light heart, the girl left the grove and followed the path back to the manse, seeing now that the garden door was guarded by the Faceless sellsword she had only just been battling. She gave him a mock-salute with her two fingers and then scurried through the corridors back to her dark chamber.

The Cat muttered, "'Nar amala," after she entered the room so that she might find her shift and change for bed. Her taper blazed to life and she strode to her trunk, throwing open the lid. She rummaged for a few seconds and then located the desired garment. After pulling off her blouse ( _Jaqen's_ blouse) and breeches, she slipped into the cool shift and then dropped wearily onto her bed. Sleep came to her immediately and if she dreamed at all, she did not recall it.

* * *

The next morning, the cupbearer arose early and broke her fast in the kitchen before she reported to the small hall to help serve the family. Lidia bounded in earlier than the rest, clearly excited about something. Unable to contain her joy for long, she confided in the only other person in the room: Mattine.

"Today I'm going to see the mummers performing near the harbor," the girl giggled. "It's been so long since I've had any real fun, I can't wait!"

The Cat supposed that the girl led such a sheltered life, a stupid mummers' show must seem a great treat, but inwardly, she scoffed at the idea. Still, finding a way to accompany the girl would both thwart the wealthy man's plan to bed her as well as give her the opportunity to possibly see the Bear and get any news from the temple that she may have missed. She would also like to check on little Syrio. She had promised to visit when she could and her plan for the nameday feast would require the boy's help. The girl felt it best to ensure their ties remained strong.

"Lady Lidia, Ragman's is no safe place for the daughter of Atius Biro," Mattine warned her. "Believe me, I know my way around those docks and have a lot of experience avoiding cutpurses and drunken sailors. That's no easy thing, especially for someone who has no experience in that less savory part of town."

"But my father's guard will be with me," the girl said.

"Oh, and he has such fine household guards, too, I'm sure!" Mattine replied. "Around the Purple Harbor, when you would only have to walk amongst our fine Braavosi captains and sailors, I am sure they would have no trouble at all avoiding danger. But Ragman's is different. I don't think those guards have spent much time there—it's too disreputable for them, I'd wager. I just want you to be careful. It would be terrible if you were to be robbed... or... _worse_. But I'm sure your father is sending out a whole company of guards with you. That should be enough to thwart the riff raff and cutthroats, even if the guards don't know their way around very well."

"A whole company? I... I think he had just planned to send one..."

"Oh, just one?" the cupbearer asked dubiously, trying and failing to hide her disapproval. "Well... do you know _which_ one?"

"The one he keeps at his side always. Owen."

Mattine's eyes widened in shock but she quickly pulled her expression into a neutral look. The dismayed expression was not missed by the astute daughter, however.

"What? What?" Lidia asked the servant, sounding a little breathless. "What is it?"

"Oh... I'm sure it will be fine."

"But, what? What were you thinking just then? Why did you look surprised?"

"Well, my lady... It's just that Owen is new to Braavos. I don't see how he could possibly know that much about Ragman's Harbor, especially if he mostly just follows your father around. Unless... does your father go to Ragman's often?"

"No. Almost never," the girl admitted, and then got a look of concentration on her face. "But _you_ know your way around there, don't you Mattine?"

"Well, I suppose I do. I practically grew up in the streets there."

"Oh!" the girl said in surprise, a look of pity overtaking her features. "I didn't know. I'm sorry."

 _There are far worse things in this world, little lady,_ the Cat thought. _Some of them are coming for your father._

"Don't be sorry, my lady. At least growing up there gave me the knowledge of the safe alleys and the unsafe ones, and which inns to avoid and which serve the best fish stew!" the girl laughed lightly. The tinkling sound charmed Lidia whose face took on a sly look as she leaned toward the cupbearer and whispered her plan.

"You are very brave, aren't you Mattine? Not like me. You're tough," Biro's daughter mused. "Do you think you could come with me today? Show me around? Keep me safe from cutpurses... and _worse_?"

"Oh, I would love to, but I'm afraid my duties won't permit..."

"Leave that to me!" the girl interrupted. "My father refuses me _nothing._ "

And this was how the assassin's apprentice found herself once again in Biro's garish and luxurious gondola, this time flanked by Lidia and the Faceless sellsword on the overstuffed cushions of the passenger's bench. Of course, the wealthy man had been too distracted by his acutely ailing belly (thanks to _three_ drops of Cat Gut—one drop for the fingers at her belly, one for the crawling sensation she still felt beneath her collarbone, and one for the neck she couldn't quite scrub clean enough for her liking) to put up much of a fight when his daughter informed him that she was taking his cupbearer with her for the day. The girl attempted to explain to her father _why_ she required the servant's company but Biro wasn't much interested in what she had to say. Indeed, he seemed more concerned with his own discomfort than the amusements of his child. He merely requested a pot of the cupbearer's tea that had worked so well to soothe his belly the day before. Mattine was more than happy to oblige him, saying to him that he should be sure to drink _all_ of the brew, to ensure his complete recovery. She was kind enough to make the wealthy man a very large pot of the stuff.

The gondola pulled through the familiar gate of the wealthy man's seaside wall and out over the calm waters of the Purple Harbor. The sellsword-guard, the tempting cupbearer, and the excited child of Lord Atius and Lady Vorena settled back as the crew of the gondola rowed them swiftly toward Ragman's Harbor. As Biro's daughter prattled about her memories of the last time she had seen this performing troupe and cooed over the sights and sounds of the sea, the guard lazily inclined his head toward Mattine and whispered to her in barely audible tones.

"I find it exceedingly interesting that Lord Atius suddenly had a concern that I might not adequately know my way around Ragman's Harbor. He mentioned something about my possibly needing assistance to guarantee the safety of his daughter on this outing."

"Oh, yes, that _is_ very interesting," the cupbearer responded quietly. "I wonder what made him think it."

"Apparently, his daughter."

"Oh? Hmm. That _does_ seem strange," the acolyte agreed, a look of concern marring her features. "She knows the parts of town with which you are least familiar? I wasn't aware you were so well-acquainted with Lady Lidia. Is _she_ why you're in the manse?"

The master smirked at her with the guard's mouth. He seemed to smirk a lot, this handsome man. The Cat had never noticed that before. She wondered if it was only at her or if he smirked at all the acolytes in this same manner. She was staring off at the great ships moored in the Purple Harbor, lost in reverie, and so was taken aback a little by the handsome man bothering to answer her.

"No, little wolf. I believe the reason I am in the manse is entirely to do with you."

_What in the Seven Hells did he mean by that?_

"It's such a perfect day!" Lidia cried out to no one in particular, interrupting the quiet conversation between the two false-faced servants. "I think I have never seen such glorious weather!"

The Cat thought that there was nothing particularly extraordinary about it. It was typical Braavosi weather, warm and a little humid, though with the breeze off the water, it was not unpleasantly so. Still, she supposed that Lidia didn't get out on the water much and figured it must be a novelty to her. She decided to be polite. The cupbearer would need for her master's daughter to speak highly of her, after all, lest she risk a scourging at Lady Vorena's command. Also, ingratiating herself to the wealthy man's daughter was like to have other benefits. _More outings, for instance._ It certainly couldn't hurt anything.

"Just so," Mattine agreed with the girl. "It is a fine day for taking in the entertainments near Ragman's Harbor. Just be sure to stay close to me, my lady, so that I may keep your purse safe. Afterwards, perhaps we can find a meal. There is a wonderful place near the Moon Pool."

"The Moon Pool? Isn't that far?"

"A lovely day such as this was made for walking!" the cupbearer declared. "And it's a pleasant enough walk, once you reach the Armorers' District. I know the owner at the inn that serves the best food in Braavos."

The girl seemed to consider the cupbearer's words and then began to nod, seeming more enthusiastic as time passed.

"Yes," she said, as if she had just suddenly made the decision to follow Mattine's advice. "Yes! It's almost my nameday and I'll be ten and six. That's old enough for walking about Braavos and taking meals in inns. Yes, I think I shall!"

The apprentice could practically feel Owen's eyes rolling in his head but she did not look at him. Let him disdain her artless manipulation of the girl. This one did not need much convincing. The Cat would save her more subtle and ingenious efforts for getting what she wanted from the people who were tougher to handle and more difficult to convince. _Like the wealthy man. Or a certain Lorathi master._ Lidia was easy to read and it was easy to give her what she wanted: freedom and adventure. Such simple desires. So easy to provide. _Not like revenge. That was much, much harder._

The sellsword was looking out of the round porthole toward the shore when the Cat leaned closer to him and told him that after they gained the docks at Ragman's, he should direct the crew to move the gondola to the same spot she had first boarded it when the Faceless master had fetched her from the inn to bring her to Atius Biro.

"The canal near the inn across from the Moon Pool," she reminded him and the look he gave her told her that he needed no reminding and did not appreciate her treating him as if he were dull. The handsome man was setting some sort of record for eye rolling this day but nonetheless, he nodded in acknowledgment of her plans. They would be dropped off on the docks of Ragman's and picked up again near the inn where the cupbearer had recently served as cook. This allowed for the cupbearer to spend time with Lidia, learning her secrets and the secrets of the household. It would also allow Mattine to visit Syrio, Olive, and possibly even the Bear, if he had decided to spend time with the girl who had stolen his heart, which seemed likely enough.

As the crew found a berth near _The King's Fool_ and the trio disembarked from the Biro's extravagant vessel, the Cat looked around at the milling crowd and thought she really would need to stay on her toes to keep Lidia's small purse of silver safe. There were always cutpurses on the docks and performing troupes in the streets only seemed to draw more of them, like moths to the firelight. Some troupes even employed their own cutpurses, a measure meant to add to their profit from each performance.

Mattine expertly skirted around disreputable looking sailors and the scrawny and dirty beggars that peppered the docks and lanes of Ragman's. She pulled Lidia firmly behind her and the girl truly did not seem to mind being led so forcefully. Owen was on their heels, his hand resting lightly on his swordbelt in a gesture familiar to the acolyte. It brought Jaqen to her mind but she had business to attend to and so she tried to push her thoughts of her master and his damnable Lorathi swagger away.

 _He is much on your mind of late,_ her little voice remarked. She told her little voice to bugger off and continued moving around the docks, in search of the mummers' show that Lidia was so keen to see.

They wove through the groups of people working around or traveling near the docks and strolled along the water's edge until they reached an area of a gathering throng. _This looks like the likely spot,_ the Cat thought as they approached the crowd. The apprentice scanned the faces around them, searching for both familiar visages and anyone who looked to be a threat. Ragman's was not nearly as dangerous as she had led Lidia to believe but the acolyte knew she must at least _appear_ wary so the girl would not question her earlier assertions and also, if there happened to be a danger lurking, it would not do to let Lidia fall victim to it after all of Mattine's boasting of knowing her way around the place. After a few moments, the girl did spot the Bear and Olive. She led Lidia and the sellsword toward them.

"Mattine!" Olive cried when she spotted her friend. "What are you doing here? I thought you were..."

Before the wench could say anything that might compromise the Cat, the acolyte interrupted her to introduce Lidia _Biro_ and _Owen_. The tavern wench gave the sellsword a sour look, no doubt recalling his treatment of Syrio, not knowing that _this_ Owen was not _that_ Owen. For his part, the Faceless master wearing Owen's face merely looked amused. Olive bowed her head at the wealthy man's daughter, likely noting the resemblance as she had the advantage of knowing they shared partial parentage, but Lidia seemed oblivious, probably unable to look beyond the serving girl's plain clothes and roughspun cap.

The Bear introduced himself pleasantly, saying that his name was Willem and his sister hid her smile. _He has chosen a name from Westeros though his look obviously marks him as Lyseni. Oh, well, he could say that his father was a Westerosi sellsword who planted a bastard in some Lyseni beauty before moving on with the Second Sons or some other company. He might even claim to have been named for such a father._

As the girl squinted at her brother in the bright mid-morning sun, she thought that it could even be true. His eyes were the dark blue so typical in Lys, but their shape had a roundness to them rather than the more common almond shape of his homeland and though his skin was somewhat fair, that could be a feature found on either continent (were not her own kin typically pale from all their time spent sheltering from the harsh northern clime?) _Willem's_ nose was straight and strong, almost narrow, and his pale Lyseni hair could be mistaken as a product of some bastard of Starfall, or perhaps a Blackfyre refugee from Dragonstone. The boy's laughter at some jape of the handsome man's drew the Cat from her inconsequential thoughts.

"I've been wanting to see these new mummers perform," Olive was telling Lidia, "but it wasn't until now that I could get Staaviros to agree to let me have a little time for it. Of course, I must head back to the inn straightaway once they are done."

"Where is this inn?" Lidia asked pleasantly, making conversation.

"Oh, it's very near the Moon Pool," the wench explained, "just across from it, in fact."

"Oh, Mattine!" the wealthy man's daughter cried. "Is that the place you were saying we should visit?"

"Just so," Mattine responded. "I was the cook there before I came to... serve as cupbearer for your father. Olive works there. She can vouch for the quality of the food."

"Aye," Olive agreed, smiling at her half-sister, "though perhaps it's not quite as good as when Mattine worked there. Your father stole away a very talented cook."

"You flatter me, Olive, but I've eaten there before and the food was delicious."

"You ate at the inn before you were the cook there?" the wench asked curiously. "I don't recall that. When was it?"

The Cat cursed her own mistake. Of course she was thinking of the time that she and Jaqen had eaten the honeyed chicken ( _the apprentice had a sudden thought of a handsome ship's captain licking the honey from his fingers between bites and expertly suppressed both the shiver her memory wrought as well as the memory itself)_ before he finished his tale of his travels to Westeros, but she had been a widow then, not Mattine, and so of course Olive would not have known it was her. The apprentice offered a convincing explanation that she had been taken there once by her mother, when she was very young, but she still remembered how delicious the food had been. Olive could hardly expect to recall every young girl who had paraded through the inn's dining room in the past ten years.

Further discussion was interrupted by a white-bearded, portly man with a booming voice who moved confidently into the center of the large crowd.

"I am Robert Stone!" the master mummer announced to cheers and applause. "It has been a great while since I last brought my troupe to Braavos but I hope you will find our show worth the wait!" He threw his arms out wide, turning slowly around to face each part of the circling audience. More cheers erupted and the look on Lidia's face was delighted. The Cat, for her part, kept her eyes on a little urchin slipping through the crowd, looking for likely purses and pouches to plunder. When he passed very near to her, she reached her hand out and wrapped her fingers tightly around his scrawny arm.

Kneeling as if the pull a rock from her shoe, the apprentice muttered in the boy's ear, "Take your talents to another part of the crowd, boy. This one here," she indicated Lidia with a nod of her head, "is to be left alone." She managed to make her doe eyes appear dangerous and there was no mistaking the tone of her voice, and so the boy just bobbed his head and scampered away. But there was something familiar about him, the girl thought, as she watched him work his way through the throng. _Something about the dark eyes, as big as saucers._ The girl shook her head and stood back up to listen to Robert Stone's speech as he related the content of the show. He announced that he was proud to introduce a recent addition, a talented acrobat to replace a regular member of their troupe who had suffered an unfortunate accident two nights previous as he descended the gangway and slipped, twisting his ankle and rendering himself unable to perform. Fortune had smiled upon them in their hour of need, however, and a son of Braavos with extraordinary natural talent would fulfill the role while they lingered in town. The new performer parted the crowd and joined the master mummer in the center of the circle, bowing low. He certainly had the Braavosi look, but the Cat was sure she had never seen his face before.

The master mummer continued introducing performers and then explained the main show was an old favorite but one The King's Fools had never performed in Braavos; a comedy based on the Westerosi War of Five Kings. The Cat felt her heart clench as the man said it, but her face showed nothing. Mattine did not know anything more of this war than what she heard from the mouths of sailors on the docks and she certainly did not have family who were involved in the war or a brother who had been one of those five kings.

As the show began and both Lidia and Olive became absorbed, the apprentice drifted closer to her brother so that they might talk.

"How is your arm?" the girl asked the Bear.

"A little stiff," he admitted, "but much better. The ribs still hurt, though."

"I suppose your injuries interfere with your amorous pursuits of your new lady love," the Cat teased.

"Not in the least," the boy said but he colored a little just at the discussing of it. "Olive is very proper and there's nothing I'd try that would be hampered by my wounds."

"Olive is _very proper_?" the girl echoed in disbelief. "We _are_ talking about the tavern girl I worked with at the inn, aren't we?"

The Bear glared at his sister and she laughed at his serious expression.

"Bloody hells, Bear, you really _do_ think you're in love!" she whispered in amusement. "Honestly, what am I going to do with you?"

"Shh!" he shushed her, glancing at Olive and looking relieved to find she was too engaged in the amusements of the mummers to pay any attention to his sister's remarks. "I haven't told her!"

"Well, if you act as moony around her as you're acting right now, I have no doubt that she already _knows_ ," the Cat laughed. "Are you spending much time together?"

"Every moment I'm not bid to do something by the principal elder or my master," the Bear confided. "I've been spending an awful lot of coin on food and drink at the inn, just so I can see her."

"I _thought_ you looked a bit stout," the girl japed, patting at the boy's firm middle. The Bear was a big man, both broad and tall, but he was as hard as a stone under his clothes. Any excess intake he was getting, he must be burning off with lovelorn sighing, since it couldn't be in the training room with his injuries. Or, perhaps the long walk between the inn and the temple was enough to keep him from putting on weight.

"Oh, shut up!" he growled, causing both Lidia and Olive to look back at them. He gave Olive a lopsided grin and the wench smiled sweetly back at him. As the two half-sisters turned back to the show, laughing at some silly tumbling routine that was happening just then, the Bear's face took on a devilish grin as he obviously decided to give as good as he was getting from his sister.

"You don't look stout at all, _Mattine_. In fact, you look absolutely gaunt; almost as if you weren't eating," the boy observed, lifting his eyebrows with mock worry as he circled her waist with his big hands, squeezing slightly as if to show how _insubstantial_ was her girth. "I imagine it must be hard to be separated from your true love, but I am of the opinion that he would not wish you to pine for him so. You simply _must_ eat."

"What? Eat? I eat plenty, thank you. I don't even know what you mean..."

"You know _very well_ what I mean," he whispered, jabbing her in her ribs with his elbow as if they were sharing a great secret. "And it must be true love, too, or else why would you forgive him so readily for tossing you into the canal?" Here, he winked at her and smiled sweetly, watching with satisfaction as the Cat's false jaw dropped and she gaped at him in disbelief.

"Were you born this stupid, _Willem_ , or did your mother drop you on your fat, Lyseni head when you were a babe?" the girl spat and then dropped her voice even lower and hissed, "You are well aware that Jaqen didn't have anything to do with the plot against me. _And I am not in love with him!"_

 _Yes, you are,_ that bloody little voice chirped happily.

"Yes, you are," her brother echoed wickedly.

"Bah!" she cried, earning another stare from Lidia and Olive. The Cat clamped her mouth shut and made her face look amused and diverted, as if her "bah" were some sort of involuntary reaction of delight to the skill of the stupid mummers. When the sisters turned around again, the girl hissed at her brother, "Love is for ridiculous little girls too idiotic to know better and for the stories their septas tell them hoping to distract them from the real world. If _you_ think you're in love, _you're_ an idiotic little girl! _And_ a fool."

"If you _don't_ think you are, then _you're_ a bigger fool than I could ever be," her brother replied calmly.

She glowered at him but said nothing, instead turning her attention back to the crowd, looking for the little cutpurse who struck her as familiar. She saw no sign of the skinny, ragged boy with the large eyes. Sighing, she began to watch the mummers once again but found they had already begun the portion of the entertainments that she least wanted to see: the battle of the five kings farce. She had apparently missed the slaughter of Renly Baratheon but the girl set her jaw and pressed her mouth into a hard line as a mummer wearing a stately doublet and a crowned wolf's head paraded around the circle to a mixture of hoots and jeers from the crowd. Lidia clapped and cheered excitedly as the new acrobat tumbled through the center of the circle, wolf's head held firmly in place by straps that were tightly cinched under his arms. The effect of the tumbling wolf-king was... _disconcerting_. He was meant to be showing off, the girl thought, but that was wrong. Robb had never been boastful. She had no doubt that he only reluctantly donned his crown in the first place and found it hard to imagine him ever making such sport of his position. _And certainly not in front of the likes of Walder Bloody Frey._

Robert Stone was playing the part of the deceitful lord who had made a mockery of the ideal of _guest right_. Though she found it hard to overlook the fact that this performance was making a jest of one of the most painful and defining moments of her life ( _T_ _his is why it is better to be no one,_ she thought, _and to have no one. This is why it is better to_ love _no one_ ), the Cat found herself awed by the most magnificent display of somersaults and backflips she thought she had ever seen. She was drawn to the feats and desired to watch them but she couldn't stomach seeing the half-wolf, half-man character performing them. Finally, her sadness and disgust triumphed over her fascination with skill and she turned her back on the performance. Her emotions must have been plainly writ upon her false face because the Bear placed a hand comfortingly on the Cat's shoulder, giving her a little squeeze and an concerned look. She gratefully gave her friend a small, sorrowful smile and then noted the little cutpurse working his way back through the crowd.

_There he is._

The acolyte narrowed her eyes, watching the progress of the undernourished child, noting how he slunk here and there but did not actually seem to be stealing anything. If she didn't know better, she would think that the cutpurse act was just that... _an act_.

The scores of people watching the show were clapping loudly and calling out to their favorite characters to be wary or look behind them or arm themselves against the inevitable treachery that would befall them. As the farce progressed, the Cat continued watching the little cutpurse with suspicion but was soon distracted by Lidia's squealing and grabbing her arm as the iron borne king fell from his perch into the waves below created by piled blue cushions.

 _She's entirely too taken with this tripe,_ the girl thought harshly. _I lived it, and it was not so entertaining up close._

But then the mummers came to the part of the show that did draw her interest: the so-called _Purple Wedding_. Arya had not been there to see Joffrey choke and gasp and turn black. She had not been able to deliver the gift to him as she had wished and had been denied the chance to even witness it, so this was as close as she would get. The acolyte turned back around to face the mummers and watched as Robert Stone, now dressed as Stannis Baratheon, chortled and slapped at his knee as the false Joffrey grabbed at his neck and clawed at his throat. Some sort of red dribble leaked from his mouth and then the mummer drew his hands desperately over his face, turning it purple. The Cat admired his sleight of hand but knew the man had a colored chalk in his palms that he used for the effect.

 _Not nearly so gratifying as the real thing, but it will have to do, I suppose,_ Arya thought grimly.

 _Stannis_ stomped up to his throne which sat before a large, looming black castle behind which stood a white wall. _The Nightfort_ , the girl knew from news she had picked up over the years on the docks. _Stannis' new seat of power on the Wall._ Her brother had given the legitimate heir to the throne of the Seven Kingdoms the Nightfort to call his own. _Jon_ had done that; a mere boy had gifted a seat to a king, when he was still Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. _Before his men betrayed him,_ she thought angrily, a frown curling Mattine's healing lip. Arya shook her head slightly, trying to dislodge her thoughts of her brother before she was pulled too deeply into melancholy by them.

The entertainments continued with more tricks and tumbling. One of the mummers juggled fiery torches, drawing gasps and thunderous applause from the audience. The Cat wasn't interested in _amazing feats of daring learned in Asshai_ (she highly doubted any of these swindlers had ever been to Asshai) so she returned her attention to the crowd and sought out the little cutpurse again. Again, he was nowhere to be found.

The show finally drew to a close with people clapping and cheering, tossing coins into a chest for the troupe. Lidia felt so moved and as the crowd thinned and dispersed, she approached the chest to toss in a silver herself. Mattine followed the girl, keeping a wary eye on the few remaining audience members as the Bear led Olive along the water, taking her hand and walking at a leisurely pace in the direction of the inn. A few people had stayed behind to speak with the mummers, shake Robert Stone's hand, or compliment the performers. _The cutpurse had also stayed,_ the Cat noted, his position more easily identified now that he had far fewer bodies to hide behind.

She watched as the child moved, seemingly at random, to stand across the lane from the remaining crowd. He settled himself in the recessed entryway of an ale house. The boy stood in a direct line from where the talented acrobat had come to rest, right in front of master mummer. As the apprentice watched, it seemed to her that a look passed between the child and the false wolf-king and she felt a sense of confusion descend over her.

 _What has one to do with the other?_ she wondered, letting her gaze rest on the Braavosi acrobat, no longer wearing his offending costume.

Her bewilderment was almost immediately replaced with surprise when she saw the arm of the troupe's newest member flash in a rapid arc in front of Robert Stone. The master mummer was suddenly clutching at his throat, a look of shock on his face mirroring her own, as streams of red poured from between his fingers and soaked the front of his Stannis Baratheon costume. There was no immediate reaction from the few people who were witness to the scene. Indeed, the movements of the acrobat had been so rapid and his expression so _untouched_ and _unaffected_ that it was not immediately apparent to anyone but her that he'd had anything to do with the abrupt collapse of the older man; as if it were entirely reasonable that a man's lifeblood could just pour forth spontaneously from his neck.

Some people doubtless believed it was a staged performance but as a pool of blood began to form around the master mummer's head upon the ground, those few people nearest to him began to scream. By the time the horrified noise spread, the acrobat had employed his unique skills and was somersaulting across the performance space, adding to the surreal feeling that this was all somehow simply artifice and mummery and that at any moment, the master mummer would leap up and take a bow.

The Cat watched the murderer's movements and suddenly realized that the acrobat's path was blocked by Lidia and herself. The wealthy man's daughter stood frozen in place, just staring at the graceful fiend and the bloody dagger he was clutching, a scream caught in her throat at his approach. Owen was too far away to be of help and the Bear had already left with Olive on his arm, probably hoping for a kiss from the wench before they reached the inn. Without hesitation, Mattine threw herself at Lidia, wrapping the girl in her arms and pulling both herself and the stunned girl to the ground and out of the path of the lethal mummer. The Cat acted without thinking; or, rather, the thought came to her, suggesting the appropriate course of action for her to take, and then left so quickly, it made it seem as if she had no time to consider what to do and acted out of instinct. _You have all the instinct you could ever require._ As he rushed past the girls, the acrobat seemed to hiss something at Mattine and then, before anyone else thought to point a finger at him, he was gone, disappearing down a nearby alleyway.

Biro's guard looked on (a touch too calmly, the Cat thought, acting more like a Faceless man than a Westerosi sellsword). The cutpurse, strangely enough, had seemed to be appraising the acrobat with his wide eyes gazing out from his spot near the ale house door. At least, that was the impression the Cat got from the expression on the young boy's face, but she could no longer make a study of the child's features as he had seemed to disappear as well.

As Mattine rolled away from Lidia and tried to sit up from her spot on the ground, she thought of what the man had said to her when he rushed past. It sounded like, " _You should be dead, wolf bitch"_ but it happened so fast, she couldn't be sure. The voice was not familiar to her but coming of age in the House of Black and White had taught her that such superficial details as the way a voice sounded meant little and less. What meant _more_ were details that were harder to change—a man's tumbling skills, for instance. _Those_ could not be faked.

It had all seemed to happen in slow motion but of course it had really transpired in a matter of a few seconds, from the slash at Robert Stone's throat which had ended the master mummer's life to the startlingly elegant escape of the perpetrator through the remaining crowd to his dash into the street and down an alley. The Cat longed to give chase but this was not something Mattine would do, so she refrained. However, it _was_ something a personal guard of Atius Biro would do if the daughter of his master were threatened, and so Owen gave a quick shout to Mattine and Lidia, saying he would catch the scoundrel who had tried to harm his lady, and that they should meet him at the place they had already determined to go before he took off in a sprint down the same alley into which the murderous murmur had only just disappeared.

 _Master chasing apprentice?_ the acolyte wondered.

"Come, Lady Lidia," the cupbearer said, helping the frightened girl up from the ground.

"Mattine..." the girl choked out, her eyes wide and brimming with tears, "you saved my life!"

"Oh, no, my lady, I'm sure I overreacted. I was just so _scared._ "

"No, Mattine. I saw his eyes," the daughter of the wealthy man insisted. "As he was running toward us, I saw the way he _looked_ at me, holding that knife in his hand. He meant to _kill_ me. If you hadn't knocked me to the ground..."

 _He wasn't looking at you,_ the Cat thought. _He was looking at me._

Lidia shivered and the girls watched as the crowd around what was now Robert Stone's corpse thickened as people ran from all directions to see what was causing such commotion. The cupbearer determined they should go before they were detained. That was a nuisance she was not willing to endure.

"Come on, my lady," Mattine whispered to the shaken girl. "Let's leave this place. You need something to eat, and perhaps some wine to calm you. You don't need to see this… this _carnage_."

Biro's daughter nodded and then clasped the cupbearer's hand, following mutely behind Mattine as the Cat expertly wove her way through the crowd and in and out of alleys she knew better than the back of Mattine's hand ( _much_ better). As they departed, the apprentice had the very strong sense they were being watched and turned back quickly to see the large, round eyes of the little cutpurse peering out from the shadow of another alleyway, following her as she rapidly departed the scene with her new master's child in tow.

* * *

 _ **Guilty**_ -Paige (From: Whiskey was the Medicine)

 _ **Ariel Ramirez**_ -Richard Buckner


	40. Chapter 40

_The Armorers' District is bustling today,_ the Cat thought as she led Lidia Biro around the bend from the harbor and plunged into the crowd of men moving to and fro among the smithies and armorers' shops. _Must be due to all the ships I saw in port today._ Foreign sailors and soldiers, in Braavos only briefly, would be looking for exotic weaponry or fine water dancers' blades to bring home as strange and beautiful prizes from their long journeys and they mingled with swaggering _Bravos_ and unsmiling guards (of both the renowned courtesans _and_ great houses of the city), haggling, purchasing, looking, admiring, commissioning...

_Commissioning._

The thought took her back to an alleyway, watching Jaqen and Meerios Dinast through a grimy window as they met in the presence of her feline spy. Mattine looked back over her shoulder as she played the memory again in her head, seeing that they had passed the premier armorer's shop twenty yards back. She wondered what fine thing Jaqen had waiting for him there; a thing for which price was not a consideration and which would take a month to... fashion? Complete? Repair? Rework? She had originally thought (and maybe even hoped) that perhaps whatever the thing was, it had been meant for her, but Jaqen had dismissed her theory. He had presented her instead with a very different sort of gift, not something one would find at an armorer's shop; a gift whose worth was beyond counting. As the girl recalled the small wooden chest with the two desiccated hearts resting within it, she had an amusing thought and chuckled lightly to herself.

_Her sister had once told her that if she always insisted on acting like such a little animal, no man would ever give her his heart. There was no doubt that to the perfect and proper Sansa Stark, this had seemed a grave and biting insult for hurling at an unruly and wild little sister. Sansa, who likely could think of no better reward in life than to settle down and have a passel of brats with some fine lord or another, would think her words a crushing blow to her baby sister. Arya was probably just seven or eight at the time, and more like to throw a rock at the head of any boy who even mentioned giving his heart to her than to have a care for such a mincing little declaration, so the taunt had not bothered her much. Perhaps she had been mildly wounded by just the derisive tone in her big sister's voice, for being disdained by one's siblings always smarted a little, even if one did not agree with their judgment. But, as it turned out, Sansa was wrong. She was very wrong indeed. The Cat chuckled to think that the only man unrelated to her by blood for whose opinion she had ever cared one whit had given her not one but two hearts, and if anything, she acted more like an animal now than ever before (enough so that her brothers and teachers had taken to calling her by her animal nickname). Her sister, it seemed, didn't know everything about men, the girl thought with a smug sense of vindication. At least not the sort of men who were like to mean much to Arya._

"What is it?" Lidia asked the cupbearer, responding to Mattine's quiet, private laughter.

The Cat quickly left behind her thoughts of Sansa and hearts and the men who would give them and responded, "Oh, it's nothing, my lady. I was just thinking about something my sister once said to me."

Biro's daughter was not deterred and pressed Mattine on what it was that had amused her and so the Westerosi girl gave what she thought was a convincing reply; something about Hellind once saying that she wished her little sister could find the same sort of happiness she herself experienced working at the manse and now, it seemed to Mattine that she _had_. Exactly the same. Lidia gave the cupbearer a queer look and knitted her brows. This perked up some feeling in the Cat's gut, but she did not prod the girl, knowing that Lidia was the open and talkative sort. Whatever it was that was bothering the wealthy man's daughter would soon rise to the surface, the apprentice felt sure.

_Of course, it might be that the Cat didn't have to wait for it to do so..._

The cupbearer relaxed and slowed her pace just a bit, allowing Lidia to come alongside her rather than being pulled from behind Mattine's back. As the profile of the wealthy man's daughter came into the Cat's peripheral view, the girl willed herself to just lightly touch Lidia's mind, a caress as soft as the warm breeze off of the water, striving to remain undiscovered while still finding the small thing she sought. She was rewarded almost immediately.

 _...never happy, unless she was walking out of the door,_ Lidia mused to herself as the girls walked along together. _Perhaps Mattine does not know. Hellind may have kept her true feelings well-hidden. Wouldn't be the first time someone lied to protect someone they loved. Should I tell her? It might be more cruel, now. What good..._

So the assassin's impression of Mattine's elder sister had been initially wrong. The beautiful girl may have seemed in such good spirits in the market not because she was a woman in love, being treated to a small gift by the man who adored her, but because it was a rare chance to escape Lord Atius _and_ his abuse. After her time in the manse, the acolyte certainly had no trouble accepting this new view of Hellind's reality. _She was tortured, in a way,_ the Cat thought morosely, _and for that, I killed her._

No! She could not allow herself to think thoughts which led down this path. It was not hers to judge; she merely performed the will of the Many-Faced god! Had she refused, the order would have simply sent someone else to do the thing. _She had even thought the task so simple, little Loric could have performed it without difficulty._ The Kindly Man would certainly have punished the wayward apprentice suitably for her refusal, possibly even bestowing the same fate upon her that she was tasked to deliver to Hellind. _Who do you think your Kindly Man is, foolish girl?_ She bore no guilt, no fault! She was simply an instrument of a higher power, the sharp tip of the spear, not the hand which wielded it!

_You do not judge! Are you a headsman? Are you Ilyn Payne?_

The Cat pushed her free hand against her forehead, squeezing hard at each side of it with her finger and thumb, trying to crush out whatever ill humor made her think she could hear her father's voice just then. She gave the impression of one who had a sudden onset of a headache and Lidia made some exclamation of concern for her which the cupbearer waved off, telling her it was nothing and that she was fine. In truth, she was glad for the girl's prattle, as it made it difficult to concentrate on the thoughts which plagued her. The Cat had only herself to blame—she was set down the trail of unpleasantness by her own digging in Lidia's head. Thankfully, Biro's daughter seemed oblivious to that fact. Either the acolyte was getting better at tiptoeing stealthily through the mind (cat-like even in this unique sort of action), or else Lidia was too naïve to the sensation to think anything of it. She would need to test out her improving prowess on _Owen_ to know for sure. Or perhaps _Jaqen..._

The heavy feeling weighing her head down was replaced with a slow, curling warmth in her belly as she began to consider the interesting possibilities that might arise from sneaking around in _Jaqen's_ thoughts. _Had she known earlier... had she but realized... All of those unanswered questions, all of his strange looks of sadness... She could have assuaged her own torment at not knowing. She could have completed the puzzle, if she had only realized she possessed the means to do so._ But what if it was like with Lidia, just now? What if it turned out to be better _not_ to know? _Not all things are meant for your ears, foolish child,_ she heard her master chastising her. She bit Mattine's lip, no longer as troublesome to her as it healed, and determined that she would rather know, in any case, even if what she discovered forced her to think about unpleasant realities. _It was always better to know_ , the apprentice decided. _It was always better to have one's curiosity satisfied._

But there was this thing about _curiosity_ and _cats_ that she had not considered...

Without a word, the cupbearer led her master's daughter across the bridge that marked the far border of the Armorers' District and set them on a direct path toward the inn. The girls walked in silence for a bit, the Cat alone with her thoughts of unique talents and what secrets the minds of men might hold (oh, if she only knew!) and Lidia with her struggle about what she should or should not reveal to Mattine regarding her sister's state of mind during her last days in the manse. Finally, Biro's daughter could control herself no longer and the Cat felt a bit of grim satisfaction at reading the girl so well earlier and knowing Lidia would be driven to speak her mind. The wealthy man's daughter tentatively started to address the matter on her mind with her father's cupbearer _._

"Mattine," Lidia began hesitantly. She really was a kind-hearted girl, the Cat decided, if a bit indulged. "Your sister, she... I'm not sure that she would have liked the idea of you working for my father."

The cupbearer raised her eyebrows at Biro's daughter in surprise. The Cat was interested to see where the girl would go with this. How much did she know of her father's... _indiscretions_? The girl was young, but not blind. As she thought it, the apprentice had to suppress the urge to snort at her own assessment. _Young? Lidia was nearly the exact same age as the Cat herself. Was not the household currently preparing to celebrate the girls sixteenth nameday? It preceded her own by... nearly two weeks? Lidia was actually the older of the two, but only by a hair._

"Really, my lady? What makes you say it?" Mattine asked noncommittally.

"Well..." the girl waffled. She seemed to be struggling with her revelation. "I love and respect my father, please do not mistake me, but ever since I can remember, he's had one beautiful servant girl or another that he seemed to... _favor_."

 _That's a rather delicate way to put it,_ the Cat thought wryly.

"And these girls never seemed... _overly enthusiastic_ with his favor. You seem to think your sister would be happy to see that you had come to serve in the household, but I think not, Mattine."

"What are you trying to say, my lady?" the cupbearer asked, turning her wide doe eyes with all their guileless questioning on Lidia's worried face.

"I just think that you might wish to consider other arrangements."

"Arrangements other than serving your father?" Mattine responded wonderingly, almost as if she did not comprehend the girl.

Lidia nodded shortly, dropping her eyes to her feet. One did not have to be skilled in reading subtle expressions to see that the wealthy man's daughter was torn between loyalty to her father and her desire to prevent tragedy from befalling yet another servant girl. The Cat could not see her way to making _other arrangements_ , at least not for eight more days, but she gave the worried girl's hand a grateful squeeze.

"I thank you for your concern, my lady, but I have been truly happy serving your family," the Cat lied, causing Biro's daughter to give her a dubious look as she obviously surveyed the girl's healing lip and prominent facial bruise, turning an ugly green now. "Besides, if I did not have a position in your father's household, I would not have been there with you today."

Lidia's look became grave as she considered what might have befallen her if she had not had Mattine's protective instinct and quick thinking to rely upon. That Robert Stone's killer never intended any harm to the daughter of Atius Biro and would not have given her a second glance if not for the Faceless apprentice at her side was a fact the Cat did not feel she should reveal while trying to make her staying in the employ of the Biro family seem a reasonable course of action after Lidia's vague warning.

"Oh, yes," Biro's daughter said seriously. The Cat almost felt guilty for her manipulations. _Almost._

"Look, we're here," Mattine announced brightly, pointing at the inn. She released Lidia's hand, indicating that they were now safe, having arrived at their destination. When they entered the front door of the inn and proceeded into the common room, they found the Bear, _Willem_ , seated at a table and Olive leaning provocatively over it toward him, refilling his mug with ale from a sweating pewter pitcher. As her brother was attired like a well-to-do Braavosi citizen, the Cat figured it would be appropriate to seat Lidia with him though she decided she could not join them in the plain view of all the others in the inn. Lidia was like to be well-known, and was set to become even _more_ well-known once her betrothal to the Sealord's son was announced in just over a week. The daughter of Atius Biro would not be seen publicly dining with a servant, even if that servant had lately seemed to have saved the girl's life.

"I'm most pleased that you're joining me, my lady," the Bear said, taking Lidia's hand and kissing it in such a courtly way, the Cat did a double take, narrowing her eyes and studying her brother's face closely. _Where had he been hiding those manners all these years?_ She supposed that when he thought of her as one of the Faceless Men and one to be disdained and mocked at that (at least until recently), her brother had not felt the need to display his prettiest manners in her presence. But still... his soft tones and genteel bow of the head seemed odd to her, having mostly spent her time with him listening to his japing or watching him crash around the training room with his ridiculous greatsword, displaying the unenviable grace of a ox who had been lamed. As the acolyte turned toward the kitchen in search of Syrio, she noted that Olive seemed surprised as well, but not in a good way. She was scrutinizing her half-sister very closely, her eyes flitting back and forth along the invisible line that was strung between Lidia Biro and the Bear.

The Cat smirked, thinking, _He's in for it if he's not careful,_ and then made haste to find the little pot boy of whom she was so fond.

Mattine smiled sweetly at the new cook and introduced herself. Syrio was scrubbing at dishes in the sudsy tub on the far side of the room and when he heard the former cook's voice, he spun around with a genuine and sweet look of surprise and happiness on his face. He dropped the dish he was holding into the tub and it made a great, splashing _plop_ as it hit the water, sending a spray of foamy suds nearly two feet into the air. The pot boy ran to Mattine, crying her name, causing the new cook's mouth to fall open.

"He talks about you all the time," the cook said to the newcomer, "but I didn't realize how attached he was!"

Before Mattine could reply, Olive burst through the doors carrying a tray full of dishes to be cleaned.

"Just because she's rich doesn't mean she can come here and just throw herself at him," the wench was muttering, dumping the scraps into a crate and then dropping the platters unceremoniously into the soaking tub.

Mattine smiled and told Olive that she didn't have anything to worry about because _Willem_ was smitten with her and she didn't think that the tavern girl had anything to fear from the wealthy man's daughter. The Cat was enjoying the irony of the wench being upset at what she perceived as another woman flirting with her man. _All of those flirty, buxom, bouncing chickens have come home to roost, my dear,_ the acolyte thought with no small degree of mirth. She was careful not to smile, however, as Olive's mood was perceptibly dark.

"From just any wealthy woman, no, I would have nothing to fear, but this one is just a younger version of _me_ ," Olive lamented.

"Oh, Olive..." Mattine soothed, patting the wench gently on her back. It was on the tip of her tongue to say that her brother was in love with the serving girl, but she recalled how he had been worried about Olive overhearing his sister say just that during the mummers' performance and so she held her tongue. She supposed it was his right to reveal or not reveal his feelings, and in his own time. _Not that he's got much time. But then, it's not as if he'll be gone from Braavos forever, even if he does complete his trial and then get sent away immediately on an assignment._

The Cat still had one arm circling little Syrio and leaned over to give him a brief hug, whispering in his ear, "Don't forget, I will have need of your help soon. I'll send for you." She swatted at his bottom and sent him scurrying back to his duties. As he began scrubbing dishes again, the cook-turned-cupbearer remembered that Olive did not know what had transpired after she and the Bear had left Ragman's and telling her was like to distract her from her current frenzied and jealous state. As much as she had disliked bubbly, flirty Olive when they first met, she had come to appreciate the girl's good humor and smiling face since and did not like to see the wench so distraught. The Cat recalled her own consternation at the wench's shameless flirting with Jaqen and then amended her sympathetic thought slightly by adding, _However much she might deserve it..._

"The most shocking thing occurred after the mummers' show," Mattine began in a hushed voice that immediately drew the attention of all present. "Robert Stone was murdered, and by one of his own troupe!"

Olive gasped and the cook looked grim. Syrio's eyes grew as wide as saucers as he looked at her, reminding her of the strange little cutpurse who had skulked about in a fashion so studiously aimless as to be a giveaway of an obvious ruse, at least to a girl who had made a study of successful blending and unparalleled stealth. Then there was the eye contact the boy had shared with the _acrobat_ ; almost as if it was the young boy and _not_ the much older Braavosi mummer who was directing the events. The new (old) cook muttered something about ruffians at Ragman's and the place not being safe for decent people to walk about anymore. Syrio was brimming with questions about what, how, when, how much did Mattine actually _see_ and was she very scared, but Olive was quiet, almost pensive, if the wench was capable of being pensive.

 _Of course she is,_ the Cat chastised herself. _There is much more to Olive than an overly flirty, bouncing tavern girl, even if that's all she ever wants people to see._

The assassin's apprentice made a promise to herself to try to feel out Olive and get a grasp on what it was that she knew, or thought she knew, about Mattine's purpose here. With all of the serving girl's heavy looks and scrutiny and _interesting comments and reactions_ in the past, it seemed she might know rather more than was good for her, though perhaps the acolyte should try to enlist her brother as the sleuth for this task. Olive might be less-guarded with _Willem_. As if called forth by her thinking a similar name, Will, the boy Staaviros employed to help around the inn, entered the kitchen just then with an armload is dishes. He looked surprised to see Mattine but was instantly smiling at her.

"So the great lady of the manse comes to visit the lowly servants of the inn!" he declared playfully. "And we're all the better for it! Things have been drab without you around here, Mattine."

Both Olive and the cook harrumphed grumpily at that, and the Cat could hardly blame them.

"I meant to give no offense!" Will cried at the sullen looks of the women, "But Veera's husband would kill me if I flirted with her," (he did not mention that the woman was old enough to be his grandmother), "and Olive has been too busy with that _Willem_ to pay any attention to Syrio and me."

"Olive pays attention to me!" Syrio protested, looking back over his shoulder at Will in confusion. Will gave the small pot boy a withering look and Syrio shrugged and said, "Well, she _does._ "

"You might as well just say what you really mean, Will," Olive returned nastily. "You're just sad Mattine left before you could convince her to let you put your hands all over her..."

"It's so good to see _everyone,_ " the former cook interrupted before Olive could finish. She knew the wench was aiming to embarrass Will, and the Cat couldn't say that he didn't deserve it, but whatever she had been planning to say was like to embarrass Mattine as well, and so she decided to change the subject. "I have missed you all but working in the manse has been pleasant."

Olive looked at Mattine dubiously and her disbelief was obvious in her tone as she simply responded, "Oh, really? Pleasant?"

"Yes," the Cat asserted. "I'm serving as cupbearer to Atius Biro since he already had a cook to whom his wife was very attached."

"I guess your cooking skills weren't all that impressive," the new (old) cook sniffed without looking at Mattine. She was obviously still smarting from her abrupt dismissal to make room for Marco's lover just before Mattine was placed in the inn.

 _Well, that's fair, but it's not my fault,_ the Cat pouted internally. _My master was more concerned about keeping me from becoming eel-food than he was with what sort of impact his plan would have on an old cook's life._

Syrio, too young to sense the undercurrent of tension in the room, jumped to Mattine's defense, declaring her crab and cheese pie the best thing he had ever eaten in his life. _Thank you, Umma,_ the Cat thought. Veera gave Syrio a sour look and muttered under her breath about how unfit a judge for what made a good meal was a six year old pot boy.

"I'd better get out there and see if milord and milady need anything," the tavern wench groused, pronouncing the _milord_ and _milady_ with more than a touch of bitterness. She shook out her pretty curls, though, and flounced through the door with a dimpled smile plastered across her face and before the door had swung closed, the Cat noted that the girl was moving with her characteristic bounce. _Gods help the Bear._

As Lidia and Willem finished their meal, the cupbearer left the kitchen to see how Biro's daughter was feeling. She hoped the girl had gotten over her shakiness at the day's events but still remembered who had "saved" her. She was relying on the girl's good will to translate into some benefit in the manse. It might buy her a little trust from Lady Vorena. As the Cat approached the table, she saw Lidia giggle and brush prettily (so very much like Olive was want to do) at some statement of the Bear's. She then heard Lidia invite her brother to the upcoming nameday feast.

"Oh, my lady," Mattine interrupted, "do you think it wise? Won't your mother be very put out with changes to the guest list at this late time?"

Lidia sulked a bit at this which made her look younger than her almost-sixteen years, but then a look of obstinacy came over her face and she declared that it was _her_ nameday and she could invite whomever she pleased, guest lists be damned! She wanted Willem to come, as he had been kind to her and made her feel herself again after the trial of the day. The Cat could see Olive pacing along the periphery, fit to be tied and the Bear, oblivious to it all. _Men are so stupid,_ the Cat thought. But, maybe this was for the best. Maybe the Bear _did_ have a real interest in Lidia, despite all his moony sighing over Olive, and if that were the case, it could never be serious, betrothed as she was to the Sealord's son. A new flirtation, though, would prevent him from doing anything stupid with Olive, which might save all of them a bit of trouble in the end. _Yes,_ the Bear's sister thought, _if this is where his interest now lies, I shall encourage it._ He had frightened her a bit earlier with his earnestness and revelation that he was in love with the tavern wench. With the final trial fast approaching, the Cat could see no way for such an infatuation to end well, for either Olive or the Bear.

The cupbearer made encouraging noises about Lidia's plan, earning herself a wounded look that turned quickly into a hateful glare from Olive but before she could say or do anything to mitigate the wench's anger, the cupbearer was distracted by Owen walking through the front door. He was with someone. It took her a second longer than it ought to have to place Owen's companion in the dim light, distracted as she was by all the day's occurrences, but then again, she had only seen his face twice in her life, and it wasn't even his real face. _Marco._

_What was her master doing here?_

* * *

The personal guard of Atius Biro had apprised his master's daughter of what had happened since he last saw her, immediately following Robert Stone's murder and immediately before he pursued the perpetrator, ostensibly because he had threatened Lidia's person. Unfortunately, he had not been able to apprehend the acrobat who had undoubtedly used his impressive skills to assist in his own escape. He had finally given up the chase to make his way to the inn and assure himself that his charge was fine and not feeling shocked or stressed over all that she had been subjected to that day.

Though the handsome man wore a false face, even in the sellsword's weathered features, the Cat could read his lies. _He wasn't trying very hard, it seemed. But then, one really didn't have to in order to convince Lady Lidia. She was far too trusting._ From watching him relate his tale to Biro's daughter, the acolyte knew that the handsome man _had,_ in fact, caught up with his own apprentice. She assumed that the two assassins had then trekked to the temple together, where, for some unknown reason, the handsome man had picked up Jaqen as a companion and journeyed to the inn with him. She did not like to think of them together for all that long while as they no doubt had shared some good laughs along the way, likely at her expense.

_Why was her master here, anyway?_

Her question was shortly answered as she saw Marco's eyes search for her and then, finding her, pin her down across the room. He gave her a look and a small gesture that she read as easily as a parchment. _Meet me out back. Now._ She had always thought that her master could say more with a look than most people could say with a thousand words. As she mulled his request, she determined that his judgment was sound; that he should meet with Mattine would be expected by those in the inn who knew of their _relationship._ That the meeting should be kept discreet was imperative for her position in the wealthy man's manse, especially since Biro's own daughter was within steps of both the Lorathi assassin _and_ his disguised apprentice. She gave him a slight nod and turned to enter the kitchen once again, just as Will passed her with another armload of dishes. She grabbed a few from his stack in the guise of being helpful and pushed through the kitchen door ahead of him. His look of surprise turned to quickly to pleasure.

"Well, thank you kindly, Mattine," Jaqen heard the insolent boy drawl as he followed the cupbearer through the door of the kitchen, his eyes wandering a bit lower on the backside of her form than was considered polite. The Lorathi frowned very slightly and his brother, noting it, smirked.

"She had very little trouble handling herself with the likes of Biro," the handsome man said, leaning into his brother so that his quiet words could be heard. "I hardly think you have to fear what harm may befall her at the hands of a silly, common boy who works at an inn for a living."

"A man always finds poor manners irritating," the Lorathi explained almost dismissively, turning to his brother.

"Just so," the handsome man agreed with a small, amused smile on his lips. He nodded his head in assent when his Lorathi brother excused himself to go and find his apprentice.

Marco exited the inn through the front door then walked around to the alley that ran behind Mattine's former bedroom off the kitchen. He saw his lovely girl duck out of the alleyway door of the inn and look first one way, then the other when she finally spotted him. As he approached her, the girl folded her arms across her chest and raised one quizzical eyebrow at her master.

"A man did not expect that you would be at the _event_ in Ragman's Harbor today," Jaqen began.

"A girl did not expect the _event_ to be quite so... _eventful,_ " the Cat countered. "What was going on, Jaqen?"

"A boy was earning his face," he said quickly, speaking so softly she had trouble hearing him, his eyes darting over her shoulder as if checking to be certain they were truly alone in the alley.

" _Earning his face?_ Killing a stupid _mummer_ was the Rat's final trial?" the girl scoffed.

"No, silly girl, his final trial is yet to come, though it will be soon, a man imagines."

"So... he has to kill _again_ to succeed at his trial?"

The Lorathi blew out a long breath and then looked at his apprentice for a moment, seeming to struggle. His face settled into an almost apologetic expression as he finally decided what it was that he _could_ say, which wasn't much.

"A man cannot tell a girl what a final trial entails, no matter how much he may wish to."

The Cat rolled Mattine's eyes. The effect was comical—exaggerated to the point of mummery—due to their large size and doe-like appearance. The master assassin had no doubt that the irritation behind the gesture was even larger than the brown, Myrish eyes that communicated it to him and it made him smile a bit. His look was both amused and fond. Of course, this increased her vexation ten-fold.

"Well, if you're not here to actually give me any useful information, then why _are_ you here?" the girl asked her mentor, her tone rather testy.

"Perhaps a man's false face has made a girl forget to whom she speaks now," her master said quietly, his amusement gone in an instant, and there was ice underlying his words. The girl cast her eyes to her feet in contrition and mumbled an apology, then rephrased her question.

"What brought you here today, Jaqen?"

"A man's sister informed him that you were at the mummers' show today," the Lorathi answered. "No one in the temple seemed to be aware that this would be the case."

"The handsome man knew," she told him but then amended, "but not until we were leaving, really. But... how did the waif..."

Her voice trailed off as she made the connection in her mind. _The little cutpurse with his dark eyes, as wide as saucers... The Cat knew he.. she... had seemed somehow familiar._

Jaqen observed her and saw that she understood the _how_ but not the _why._

"These things... must be _witnessed_ ," her master told her simply, "and a boy's own master has been rather busy with _other duties._ Now, how did a girl come to also be a witness? A man is surprised your new master would consent to part with you for a whole day, knowing this wealthy man's _proclivities._ "

"Poor Lord Atius," the girl sighed with false concern, "he has been doing quite poorly lately. I managed to... _obtain_ an invitation to watch the mummers. From his daughter."

"Obtain? Don't you mean extort?" Jaqen corrected her with a snort.

"Well, manipulate more than extort," the girl admitted. _So he and the handsome man really had talked about things that had occurred in the manse as he and Jaqen made their way from the temple to the inn,_ she realized. What else had _Owen_ told her master?

As if reading her mind, the Lorathi continued, "A man supposes that a girl wheedling her way onto a gondola so she could attend an amusement near the docks was preferable to allowing a wealthy lord to rape her, however she may have come by her invitation."

The Cat rolled her eyes again, finding her master's characterization of the events the handsome man had chanced to interrupt a bit _dramatic._ This was probably coming from Owen, who hadn't even witnessed what it was that he'd interrupted. _Although he had seen her bodice disturbed. Perhaps he had drawn a more dire conclusion from that than one that would be justified by the reality. She had never felt that the situation was out of her control. Just before the handsome man had knocked at the solar door, was she not preparing to render Biro unconscious? Still, the timing of the interruption had saved her from the possibility of the wealthy man awakening with a full memory of her jamming her fingers into the soft place behind his collarbone as she uttered a string of strange, foreign words. She might have been hard-pressed to come up with a plausible explanation for her actions, but she had never doubted that she would have been able to. Eventually. The Cat supposed having the handsome man fetch Biro to the small hall to join his wife in the planning of the upcoming feast was a rather more advantageous outcome than the one she had been heading for prior to his knock._

"Do you honestly think I would let that lecherous old dog go that far?"

"Not purposefully, no. But had my brother not intervened, how would a girl have handled herself?"

She wasn't sure if her master was testing her to satisfy himself that she was thinking her plan through or if he was truly curious, but she told him the truth; that she had been preparing to use the little trick of Asshai he had taught her. _An'ha assab dami_ ; _to stop the blood and nerves._ At the time he had shown her the skill, he had even alluded to the fact that it would be useful in just such a circumstance. _You cannot always be sure that you will have a knife strapped to your thigh when some brutish knight attempts to hurt you, sweet child,_ her master had said after he had taught her the trick. The girl also suspected it was useful for those times when a knife might be available, say, in one's corset, but to use it would violate the oddly specific terms of, say, a contract...

Jaqen looked troubled at her explanation. The girl asked him what he was thinking and he told her that in the circumstance she described, he felt to reveal a knowledge of blood magic would have, at the very least, resulted in her being expelled from the manse and failing in her mission. What he did not say but what he was bothered by immensely was the thought of something worse than merely losing a position in a household befalling his apprentice. A betrayal of this magnitude, an attack on one's master using blood magic, was something the wealthy man would not take lightly and would not be likely to forgive. The Lorathi envisioned his lovely girl at the mercy of Biro's guards and Biro's warped imagination. Where his thoughts then took him made him shudder visibly as he closed his eyes to drive away the images that had formed in his mind. Her master's reaction was something that disquieted the Cat tremendously. She had never seen him react in such a way. Not to _anything._

"What?" the apprentice whispered in alarm, but Jaqen just shook his head at her. Frustrated by his lack of candor, the girl recalled her earlier determination to test her _mental stealth_ a bit on a harder target than Lidia Biro and then a devious smile slowly shaped her lips, causing Jaqen to look at her sharply.

 _She was up to something,_ he knew.

The feeling was faint, very delicate, and would have even been easy for him to ignore. However, the Lorathi had already been informed by her smile and his own past experience with the feeling of her mind nudging his own was still fresh in his memory. In this way, he was able to pick out her intent and her stealthy surveillance, subtle though it was.

"Lovely girl," the master assassin cooed sweetly as he took her chin in hand and gently tilted her face up so that they were looking at each other, "a man must ask you to see to your own thoughts and leave his be."

The Cat sighed, folding her arms over her chest once again, pulling her chin from his hand and looking down as she scuffed at the rough stones of the alleyway with her toe. _A failure. He had known almost instantly._ Well, if she could not glean his thoughts with her more _unusual_ methods, she could always try asking him over and over until he relented. She liked to think of this as the _annoying little child_ method. However, when the girl looked at her master's grave expression, she lost the will to badger him. Jaqen seemed almost _distressed_ and it was not a look he wore comfortably, nor one she herself felt comfortable seeing. It tugged at her heart and made her feel this insistent desire to _help_ in some way.

"Jaqen," she whispered, placing her cool little palm against the warm flesh of his cheek. He felt almost _fevered_ to her _._ She turned his face down toward hers and his eyes, lids half-closed, seemed to be looking at her mouth. Unconsciously, she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and softly nibbled at it as she studied his false face.

 _So close, lovely girl. Too close,_ he thought, his eyes trained on her nervous, worried biting. He lifted his hand and placed it over hers, the one cradling his cheek. He closed his eyes for just a moment, blocking out the vision of her chewing Mattine's lip in her decidedly _Arya_ fashion and just let the feeling of her flesh pressed against his seep into his mind. Such a little thing, a hand placed on a face... it couldn't be wrong. _This is not dangerous,_ the Lorathi told himself.

 _"_ What are you so afraid of?" the girl asked him as she released her abused lip from the vise of her teeth. The Lorathi opened his eyes and regarded her expression of earnest concern. It was too much.

"Ah."

His response was a simple sound, lighthearted, punctuated by his smile, the half-quirked mouth that the apprentice had come to think of as his _Lorathi_ look, but it did not convey the true depth of what he was feeling. It did not hint at his very real fear.

There is a little-acknowledged side to love, one that exists as surely as the soft sighs and lovely longing and deep, driving desire. That other side to love is _fear._ Without first knowing love, how can one truly understand fear? What mother knows the cold dread of fear before she bears her babe through a haze of blood and pain and then believes her infant lost to illness in his fever bed, or when she cannot find her child on a busy street for far too long? The sharp, excruciating stab of fear that sets in for this mother is borne completely from the purest love. For all of the wonder of it, love does not exist in the absence of fear and likewise, as Jaqen had learned after he had finally come to realize and accept what it was that he felt for his lovely girl, the deepest, blackest, most harrowing, most paralyzing fear does not exist in the absence of love.

The false doe-eyes of his apprentice had gone soft with imploring as she looked up at him but how could he answer her question? _What are you so afraid of?_ How could a man ever explain this to his sweet girl? That he had never known the bite of fear before she came to him. That he had never once been afraid for himself until he feared he might be unable to find her again ( _Arya Stark. Bring her to me_ ) or unable to return to her ( _Arya Stark. Do not take her from me_ ) or unable to have her come to him _someday_ ( _Arya_ _Stark_...) How could he tell her that he had never understood possession before her, either to own or to _be_ owned (for he knew now with a certainty that he was owned by her, though _she_ did not yet know it), but now that he did, how he had also come to understand what it was to love, and in gaining that knowledge, how he now understood that the unspoken part of love was to experience true, nauseating, deep and intense fear? How could he explain to her that only now did he understand what it meant to be terrified?

There was a reason that both he and Arya mistrusted the idea of love so instinctively. They both knew that love was weakness _precisely because_ it was inseparable from fear. A man who loved could fear losing that which he loved. He _would_ fear, and _feel_ that fear as he had never felt anything before; its cold grip, its iron jaws, the way it robbed him of breath and both chilled him and made him burn all at once, deep inside where no soothing hands could reach to comfort and where no healer's ministrations could touch to cure. How could he, an elite assassin pledged to serve Him of Many Faces, explain that he loved this one lovely girl, and in loving her, was doomed forevermore to fear losing her, either to the murderous hand of a wealthy man or the vengeful hand of an order which felt betrayed or the fickle hand of chance as she sailed away from him on a ship that might be caught in a storm or be smashed to bits against jutting rocks?

How could the master adequately explain to his apprentice his wretchedness; his overwhelming fear? That the things a man would dread for the rest of his life were now without measure? _The fear that something might happen to her if he were not with her to prevent it; the fear that even if he were with her, he might be powerless to stop harm from befalling her, thus failing her and losing her all at once; and, most of all, the fear that she might never feel the same for him as he did for her and thus condemn him to lose her without ever having had her._ This was the exquisite, acute, and petrifying fear that could only come from being in love; from valuing someone above all else, even oneself. The fear that everything one has ever known before means little and less in the face of the feeling, no, the _truth_ of it, now recognized. The fear that comes with knowing, truly _knowing_ , that all that once defined a man was no more than wind and only the love and the fear remain, stripping away a lifetime of carefully crafted identity while bestowing an entirely new and unfamiliar identity upon him, all at once.

There was duty. And then there was love.

He was a slave to both.

It was a state that was impossible to maintain.

_What are you so afraid of?_

"Lovely girl, a man has only ever been afraid of one thing," Jaqen finally answered, and to her, it was no answer at all.

But to him, the acknowledgment had changed _everything._

* * *

 _ **All Apologies**_ -Nirvana

 _ **Epiphany**_ -Staind (Ah.)


	41. Chapter 41

Mattine lay sore and spent on her narrow bed, her mind flicking from one thought to the next to the next. She was staring into the blackness toward her ceiling as scattered bruises formed on her olive skin, the injured flesh a gift from the handsome man ( _my new master,_ the girl thought wryly) _._ She desired sleep but it eluded her. The cupbearer supposed that so many things of import had taken place that day, when she tried to consider all that had occurred, her chaotic thoughts kept her too stimulated to drift into the deep sleep she craved. So, she remained irritatingly alert despite having endured the grueling tortures specially devised for her by the Faceless master pretending to be Atius Biro's personal guard (well, the handsome man called them _training exercises_ , but the Cat felt the term _tortures_ more aptly described what had transpired in the grove of the wealthy man's garden. There were swords involved, yes, so it was not a complete deviation from their usual sparring, but when he added the blindfold into the routine, it took on an altogether _different_ bent).

A multitude of thoughts and worries fought for supremacy in her head. There was the mummers' farce and all that had occurred there, the Bear's declaration that he was in love with Olive (shortly followed by his overly attentive manner to her secret half-sister at the inn), seeing little Syrio (though truly, this was the least confusing part of her day), her strange and troubling conversation with the tavern wench just before the Faceless cupbearer departed the inn with Owen and Lidia, and, of course, there was her earlier fraught interaction with Jaqen in the alley. Her exercise late that evening with the Faceless sellsword had exhausted her body but all of these disconcerting considerations were filling her mind and keeping her from finding peace. At one point earlier in the night, the girl actually had succumbed to sleep but woke almost immediately, disoriented and gasping for breath when she thought she heard her master saying something to her; something about only ever having been afraid of one thing in his life and then, his voice became like a lament, mourning the loss of something the girl could not comprehend as he asked her his repetitive question.

_What have you done, lovely girl? What have you done?_

_Must have been a dream,_ she realized after a moment, but her heart was hammering away in her chest as if she had been badly frightened or abruptly startled and the adrenaline that coursed through her then covered her with a cold sweat and made her fingers and toes tingle. Her agitated state was such that it set her to turning over and twisting the sheet around her limbs in a fashion similar to the one her master had requested she cease the last time he was in this same chamber. Unable to sleep then, she gave free rein to her churning thoughts, contemplating all the various strange occurrences of the day.

 _Robert Stone had been given the gift,_ she recounted, _in a spectacularly bold way. Strange. And the waif was there to see it, as was the handsome man, as it turned out, though perhaps his presence was not anticipated by those who were making the arrangements for the final trials of the acolytes._ The Cat mentally corrected herself on that point after a bit of reflection, amending her description of what she had witnessed. _It was not a final trial, after all. At least, not according to Jaqen._

_Jaqen._

As the apprentice recalled her master's false face and worried eyes in the alley behind the inn, she remembered the feel of his cheek beneath her palm, hot like dark stone too long in the sun, burning against the calloused and cool flesh of her hand. The sensation was so exotic to her, having only ever touched her master's face rarely, that the impression it left was quite indelible. It was almost as if when she called up the image of her hand on his face and his own hand sliding smoothly over hers to hold it in place, the feeling of the Lorathi's skin touching hers was reinvigorated and she could once again _perceive_ the warmth of his flesh and the slight prickle of his stubble, there in the dark of her chamber.

But that was impossible.

 _Impossible? Tell that to my hand,_ she thought, frowning to herself as she flexed her fingers and scratched at her palm with her short nails. She did not understand these ghosts of feeling plaguing her in the night. It was not normal.

_What is happening to me?_

The Cat's mind scrambled for a plausible explanation that would relieve her of the need to look too deeply into the reason she could not get Jaqen's face (his true face) out of her head and her heart began to pound just then. Her brain finally seized on an acceptable solution and she thought, _My palm is just sore because of the ridiculous amount of sparring Owen required of me earlier._ For a brief few seconds, the girl was able to overlook the fact that the palm of her left hand was more used to wielding a sword than even holding a mug or a comb ( _Gods! What_ isn't _your palm more used to than holding a comb?_ the girl heard in Sansa's voice from deep within her head. It was not a memory, just a feasible assumption of what her sister would say if she were privy to Arya's thoughts just then. It made the Cat smile a little and scowl a little, all at once.) Yes, she could believe the strange feeling of her hand was simply due to her harsh training that night; a palm rubbed raw from the rough hilt of a training sword. Such an explanation seemed completely reasonable to her. Until her smarmy little voice decided to get involved in the argument, that is.

_Oh, sure, your hand is tingling and it feels like his skin is pressed against yours because you sparred a little while ago. That makes sense. Idiot._

The apprentice squeezed her eyes shut, more out of habit than for any benefit the action bestowed, and tried to make her little voice shut up. She still heard the _idiot_ echoing around inside of her skull, however, so she fought back against it with what she felt were more logical thoughts.

 _What you are trying to say is what's_ really _idiotic. I cannot feel for him what... what..._

"...what you are suggesting. It's not like that between us," she finished out loud and then felt immediately foolish. _Really, stupid? Talking to yourself is bad enough, but doing it out loud is..._ She thought of Aerys then, the mad king, and wondered when things had begun to go wrong for him. Did he start in this way? Was it as simple as talking out loud to a voice only he could hear? A voice suggesting silly notions and insupportable ideas?

_Well, if Aerys had a little voice and it was as annoying as mine, I can see how he went so mad._

The girl clenched her palm shut tightly, giving herself a new sensation to replace the fevered sensation (real or imagined) of her hand and tried to move on to other considerations, as the day had been full of them and they all bore puzzling out. She had harvested Lidia's thoughts, after all, without causing any disturbance to the girl, as far as she could tell. That was... _something._ Then there had been the interaction between the Bear and the wealthy man's daughter, which the Cat wasn't sure quite how to categorize. And, of course, there was _Olive._

 _And Jaqen,_ said the niggling little voice.

_Shut up!_

The Cat bolted upright in her bed. She waved her fingers vaguely in the direction of her taper and with a bare whisper, the room was awash in warm candlelight. She swung her legs and dropped them over the edge of her bed as she gripped at the mattress with her fingers, leaning down towards her thighs and exhaling heavily as if she could expel her troublesome thoughts and feelings simply by pushing them out into the world and away from her on her breath. Instead of soothing the harsh beating of her heart and relieving her of her discomfort, she found her actions merely transformed her tension to a different form, manifesting as an uneasy sensation that moved into her belly. It reminded her of something she had experienced once before, a long time ago.

Arya had once jumped from a railing at Winterfell to the training yard below. She was too high up, Jon had told her with alarm, but she had laughed carelessly and then leapt anyway, before he could stop her. The naughty, impulsive girl had landed hard on her feet, pulling into a crouch and then rolling forward in the dust. It wasn't the sensation of being perched so high up or the hard landing that she recalled just then (though she did remember that she had mildly sprained an ankle in her impulsive demonstration and had been confined to bed for a week after that and then had hobbled around for another two weeks after she finally whined and annoyed her way out of her recovery bed). It was the sensation of what happened in between the two, from the time she left the rail until the time she met the ground, which she recalled so vividly. It was the distinct feeling of falling _too far;_ a feeling full of both wonder and fear as the tremulous joy of the act gave way, at least in part, to the terror of the growing belief that perhaps the jump was a mistake after all. It felt as if her blood had stopped pumping and her gut was left behind on the railing, watching her as she plummeted. It was the feeling of thrilling excitement married to dreadful anticipation. She was weightless, but heavy at the same time, her expression tinged with the slimmest hope, born of the idea that perhaps somehow, she really could fly but knowing that it was much more likely that the crash was inevitable. _That was exactly how she felt just then as she thought about her master._

_Like she was falling._

_And she did not know if she would miraculously fly or if the crash was inevitable._

* * *

Earlier that day at the inn, the Cat had determined that enlisting her brother's help to find out what was going on with Olive would be fruitless. The wench was so peeved at the Bear's attentions to Lidia that his sister thought it was likely that Olive would refuse to speak to him for days. Noting the sudden chill in Olive's attitude toward _Willem_ , the Cat decided to take matters into her own hands. Perhaps _Mattine_ might offer a shoulder to cry on or some friendly advice and in doing so, gain enough of the tavern girl's trust that Olive would be open to discussing her suspicions about Mattine's purpose in the Biro household, aside from keeping a promise to little Syrio. _I will take care of this man. He will never hurt you again. This is my solemn vow._ The cook-turned-cupbearer could have meant almost anything with those words—that she would speak to the wealthy man on the boy's behalf; that she would take him as her lover and use her influence to be sure he only ever protected Syrio or at least left him in peace; or even that she would threaten to expose Biro's less-than-savory past to those who would care about such things if he dared to harm the boy. She _might have_ meant any one of those things, but, of course, what she had _actually meant_ was that she would deliver the gift to him, removing him permanently from little Syrio's life, and the world.

Olive had given Mattine a look at the time and it seemed to the Cat that the wench had understood the true meaning behind the vow, but she could not be sure. The apprentice was determined to discover if the serving girl knew the truth of _Mattine's_ involvement with the order and what her task entailed so that she could caution Olive against revealing that knowledge. It was generally understood in Braavos that one did not speak of such things, but the tavern girl didn't seem particularly good at adhering to codes and rules. This was one unspoken law she should not defy, however, for if she did, it could well mean her death.

After first garnering forgiveness for herself (her transgression being her support of Lidia's plans to invite Willem to her upcoming nameday feast), the Cat had offered sympathy and advice as well as a bit of encouragement to the wench. The girls were in the kitchen together, discussing their complete agreement about the stupidity of men, and the Cat hoped her brother and the handsome man would keep the wealthy lord's daughter distracted and occupied long enough for her to learn what she needed to know from the wench. With Jaqen seemingly so worried about _something he would not name_ that he actually allowed his concern to spill over to his face (a rare occurrence indeed), his apprentice felt driven to resolve at least this problem with Olive so she could put it behind her and concentrate her focus on more pressing matters. So much was happening just then, and her duties and mission in the Biro manse were so consuming, that she did not think she could spare any of her energies to protect Olive from herself if the apprentice could not manage to impress upon the serving girl _today_ the importance of absolute discretion. Of course, first the Cat had to determine that Olive even knew anything about which she _should_ be discreet.

Discovering this turned out to be much easier than the acolyte had dared believe, but the news was not good.

As Mattine subtly probed Olive about Biro and the incident with Syrio and the _real_ Owen as well as some of the wench's comments during the time when the cook-turned-cupbearer had decided to take the position in the manse, Olive looked around the kitchen. Seeing that they were alone (for the moment at least), the wench heaved a great sigh and told her friend to stop being so _sneaky_ about it and just ask her what it was she wanted to know. The Cat was flabbergasted. Gone were the characteristic trademarks of the flirty, flighty serving girl: the toss of the hair, the dimpled smile and the easy giggle. Gone were the winks and wicked grins. Gone was the overdone bounce. In their place, the apprentice was confronted with a grim expression, arms folded across an ample chest, and shrewd, hard eyes.

Trying to convince the wench that she was not sure what she meant by her words and change in demeanor, Mattine responded with confusion, saying, "Olive, what are you..."

Olive held up one hand, stopping the Cat's words, telling her not to bother pretending anymore, and then she told the apprentice the _most extraordinary thing_.

"Mattine was my friend."

The assassin's apprentice was speechless as her mind grappled with half a dozen separate thoughts. _Did Olive know of Mattine's sacrifice and the purpose for it? Why had the wench not reacted when she saw a face she knew well being worn by a person who was obviously a stranger to her? Had Olive and Mattine schemed together against Biro since they both had cause to hate him? Who else had the serving wench marked as Faceless? Did she realize who the Bear was? How had the order and Jaqen been careless enough to let an apprentice in the House of Black and White take a position under the same roof with someone who was well-acquainted with the face she wore? Did the others at the inn know?_

As it turned out, Olive was more than willing to reveal the information the Cat sought without even being asked. She just _talked_ and it seemed that in the talking, she was relieving herself of a heavy burden. The wench explained to the false Mattine that she and the real Mattine had been friends for a long while, having been introduced by Hellind who had worked briefly at the inn. Though Hellind was more of an age with Olive, it was Mattine who seemed to share a similar spirit with the wench, and a completely baseless belief that their lives would someday be better; grand, even. It was the ever-practical Hellind, ironically, who was actually the one who came closest to fulfilling that dream, living as she did in the manse and having the attentions of a wealthy man. But, of course, the price she paid was a heavy one. Olive had informed Mattine of the fate of both her own mother as well as little Syrio's and had urged her friend to warn Hellind and though Mattine had tried, it had not been in time to save her sister. Her guilt was overwhelming, no matter how Olive attempted to comfort the grieving sister.

"I found her at the Moon Pool one day, weeping and muttering about some insane plan to hire an assassin to pay back Biro for what he had done to Hellind. I knew she had no coin and she could not hope to afford such a service, but she seemed convinced she could barter with a priest of the temple. Then she disappeared for a few days and the next thing I knew, that handsome merchant showed up here and made Staaviros very nervous and then _you_ showed up, claiming to be a cook and not recognizing me. Mattine didn't know Will or Syrio or Staaviros, so not greeting them familiarly was one thing, but she was my best friend, and she did not know me when she walked into the inn, because she wasn't Mattine. She was _you._ This is _Braavos,_ and so that could only mean one thing."

The wench's eyes said what her words did not. _You're a Faceless Man._ It was strange to the Cat that the realization did not seem to spark any fear in the girl. She had never yet interacted with anyone who knew or suspected someone of being Faceless who did not show immediate fear or respect, though usually, it was both. Simply uttering the words "valar morghulis" was enough to induce panic in the average Braavosi citizen, yet this simple tavern wench seemed completely unaffected.

"You should not speak of any of this," the Cat said in her matter-of-fact way. "It puts you in danger."

It was an alarming oversight, and one the Cat couldn't explain. She would have to speak with Jaqen immediately, she thought. It was too bad he had already left the inn. But until the apprentice could sort out what all of this meant, Olive would need to keep her mouth shut.

"Bah," the wench responded dismissively. "Despite the fact that I did not support Mattine's insane plan, now that she's gone, I want nothing more than to see it carried out. I want Biro punished just as badly as Mattine ever did. I wouldn't do anything to jeopardize your _mission_."

"What mission?" the Cat asked, displaying Mattine's wide, innocent eyes, causing Olive to smirk.

"Alright then, _Mattine_ , I'll play your game. There is no mission, there is no plot, and you are who you say you are. And if Atius Biro should die... well, you said it yourself not so long ago: he's old."

The assassin's apprentice frowned at the girl's flippant attitude. She did not seem to grasp the seriousness of her situation, and despite everything, the Cat had a fondness for the buxom girl. She did not wish to see Olive come to harm. The order did not like loose ends, however, and the wench was behaving suspiciously like a loose end just now.

"Olive, listen to me. These Faceless Men you are going on about, I don't think they're the types who like to be _discussed_ openly. And I imagine that they certainly wouldn't like their _affairs_ to be discussed openly. If I were you, I would forget all about this and go on with your life. Enjoy your time with Willem. Be happy."

"And you, _Mattine_?" the wench countered harshly. "Will you go on with _your_ life? Will you enjoy your time with _Marco_? Will you be _happy_?"

The Cat found that these were questions to which she had no answer.

* * *

The faceless apprentice had determined that she was not like to get much sleep that night, so tangled were her thoughts, and the problem of Olive gnawed at her, though perhaps not as much as her confusion and worry about her strange feelings surrounding her master. She finally stood up from her bed and threw on some clothes, the cleanest she owned currently, the new dress from the wealthy man that had been waiting for her when she arrived back at the manse with Owen and Lidia after leaving the inn. If anything, it was worse than the wine-stained gown she had discarded (worse in that it was thinner, the fabric clingier, showing the shape of Mattine's body more obviously whenever she settled or stilled, allowing the floating, gossamer layers to drift down and lay against her curves. Otherwise, the design was very similar to the last) but all of her other clothes had been removed ( _to be laundered,_ she had been told when she inquired, _on_ _Lord Atius' orders_ ) and she had even been forced to spar in Mattine's brown servant's dress that she had worn to the mummers' show and the inn earlier, as the only clothes that had been left to her, besides the new gown, were the ones she had been wearing that day. Since the handsome man had made it his mission to teach her a lesson in the limitations of her skills once she was deprived completely of vision, her brown dress had been rendered less than suitable for wearing in public. Both sleeves had been ripped, the skirt was muddy and grass-stained from her many falls on her rump during the duel, and she had been sweating so heavily the smell of the gown was musty enough to be _offensive._ She had left it wadded up in a corner in the baths after she soaked herself that night, not wanting to drag the stench into her room. Still, the new gown was so immodest that the Cat briefly considered going back to the baths to retrieve the old one, though it was little better than a rag now. _A_ _damp, stinky rag._

In lieu of the sleep that defied her, she had thought to dress herself and slip from the manse, intending to walk to the temple and find her master. The girl wanted to discuss the situation involving the wench and try to discover if Olive's relationship with Mattine had been known by the order before they sent the Cat, wearing Mattine's face, into Olive's life. If not, then the level of carelessness that action demonstrated would need to be addressed, and if _so..._ Then the acolyte feared there was more at work here than she understood. _Again._ The apprentice also hoped that seeing her master would put to rest the strange thoughts and feelings about him that she was having. Her mind seemed to like playing tricks on her and her _little voice_ seemed determined to bombard her with unjustifiable assertions about... about _him_ and... _her._ She thought that if she could just see him, she would be able to see the truth in his eyes ( _his burning, bronze eyes... oh GODS, would you please shut_ _UP?_ )

The truth she expected to find in her master's gaze was one she felt certain would demonstrate if not exactly his _indifference_ toward her (for she knew he was not truly _indifferent_ and even understood that he felt a certain affection for her, as her almost-father and almost-brother and certain savior and master), then at least a definite lack of consideration of her as anything more than a... a sort of _ward._ And she hoped that truth would bring her peace.

So she could sleep again.

 _Will it really soothe you, to know he cares nothing for you?_ her little voice needled. _Will your heart no longer ache when you think of him because you know for a certainty that he sees you as his apprentice and nothing more?_

 _My heart does not ache!_ she insisted and wondered again if this argument with herself was indicative of some greater problem, but still she persisted in having it. _My heart is stone. My heart is ice. My heart is dead._

_Then why is it fluttering?_

The cupbearer had made it down to the end of the corridor before she stopped herself and turned around. She marched back to her chamber, kicked her slippers off into a corner, pulled the wispy, floating dress over her head roughly and threw it on the floor. The Cat stood in Mattine's form, wearing only her small clothes, and stared up at the ceiling, hands placed on her hips as her fingers tapped restlessly in succession against the false olive skin. Going to the temple was not a logical move, she realized. Firstly, there was fact that it was so late, by the time she walked there, she'd have to walk back immediately in order to be present for her required duties (and her specially planned activities as well, such as the brewing of certain teas) and this would give her no time for discussing things with her master. She also realized that revealing Olive's secrets within the walls of the House of Black and White could prove dangerous, as the Kindly Man seemed to know nearly every word uttered within the temple. She could not risk putting the wench into more danger. Her goal was to help the girl, not hasten her end, while trying to discover if the serving girl were some sort of pawn in a larger plot involving the Cat herself. _There seemed to be a fair amount of plotting happening these days._ Lastly, though it was perhaps a stupid reason, she couldn't face her master in _that_ dress. He might be able to assure her with his treatment of her and his words that he was simply her _master_ and that her thoughts of him as anything else, as _something_ more, were _ridiculous,_ but she was not sure she would be able to hear him if she was so uncomfortable under his gaze that she could not focus. The Cat determined that she should wait to see Jaqen until she could don a pair of breeches ( _and_ a man's favorite blouse) and could somehow bring him outside of the temple.

The cupbearer climbed back into her bed, yanking the sheet up over her nearly naked form (her shifts had been taken with the laundry as well), and closed her eyes, waiting for sleep to find her. When it finally did, it brought with it a wolf dream. The girl woke in the morning and she knew that Nymeria's pack had hunted all the meager game they could in the wilderness near Saltpans and had moved on from there, back towards the west, killing whatever crossed their path as they made their way around Harrenhal, feasting on both beasts and men alike. This thought gave the Cat some measure of grim satisfaction. Harrenhal was held by men loyal to the Lannisters and they were certainly no friends of hers. The more of them who ended up dead, the better off the world would be, as far as she was concerned. The wolf pack had left the familiar inn in their wake, once again, bypassing it in the night as they ranged for food, only this time, they moved in the opposite direction from the one they had traveled when they first left the orphans and their surrounding forest. While in Nymeria's skin, the girl had felt a strong pull to move toward High Heart and she tried to resist it. _The Ghost was no friend of hers._ In this instance, the wolf's will was stronger, however, and Nymeria kept her pack moving toward the place where the magic of the old gods was strong. When the cupbearer left her bed and noted how tired she felt, she did not know if it was due to her own poor sleep or the grueling pace her wolf had set for her pack as they moved through the woods and across streams, making their way to the Riverlands once again. It made no difference, however. Whether rested or fatigued, her day was set. The assassin's apprentice had a job to do.

She started out her day in the usual fashion, first breaking her own fast and then delivering a mild poison to her master. Because there were eggs on his plate (despite her suggestion to the cook that eggs upset the master's digestion), she added an extra drop of Cat Gut to the wealthy man's cup. After assisting the man to his solar for a rest and enduring his feeble attempt to grope her even as he moaned in pain, she was sent off to concoct some more of her miraculous tea (and also to inform the cook that she was _not_ to serve eggs or anything _green_ to Lord Atius until further notice). As the lunch adhered to the requirements set forth by the cupbearer, she delivered a mere half-drop of the weak poison to her master for lunch. This showed that a change in diet was at least partially effective but still discomfited the dead man enough that he did not vigorously pursue his cupbearer but merely made suggestive comments and thinly veiled threats instead. These, the girl found easy to ignore, though Mattine made appropriate noises in response even as the Cat considered how she might slip away finally to see Jaqen. _To discuss the problem of the wench,_ she qualified to herself as she brewed more tea for the wealthy man and then grimaced inwardly, irritated. _Why am I trying to justify myself to myself?_

_Because you're a pitiful craven. And an absurd little girl. And a liar, too._

_Shut up, stupid._

Mattine managed to get three pots of tea into her master that day. _A job well done,_ she complimented herself. She spotted the first of his bruises that evening as he limped into the small hall to sup with his family. He looked tired and weak. _Dehydrated, despite all the tea_ , she knew. There were only so many times a man could sit astride his privy in a day and still maintain his energy. The bruise was a small one, on his forearm, and only noticeable when he lifted his arm high and his loose sleeve slid down. She said nothing, hoping no one had seen, including the man himself. She did not wish to risk a healer coming in too early in the process. If he started shoving greens and eggs and beans down Biro's throat, it wouldn't take too long to undo all of her hard work. _The progress I have made has been hard-earned,_ she thought, remembering the throb of her cheek and the burning of her lip as she ate over the first few days after Lord Atius' harsh _correction._

Her revealing gown exposed many of her own bruises, the newer ones earned from the Faceless master now standing guard outside of the door to the small hall. These were easily explained away as a consequence of her hard fall to the ground when she had pushed Lidia out of the way of the murderous mummer who had killed Robert Stone. The wealthy man's daughter had breathlessly recounted her tale of excitement and horror to her parents shortly after trio had returned to the household the previous evening and Lady Vorena had been understandably shocked but had also seemed genuinely appreciative of Mattine's efforts on behalf of her only daughter. Biro's wife even seemed less-irritated than she might have been at the cupbearer's new and indecent attire. It probably helped that every time she looked at Mattine, there were large, purple reminders of what the girl had supposedly done for the family displayed prominently on her arms and shoulders.

After the supper, when the cupbearer suggested a cup of tea before bed to her master ( _Perhaps it will stave off any further attacks in the morning,_ she suggested, _so my lord might be more himself after_ _breakfast_ ), the wealthy man did not object. The girl noted that she would need more ingredients for her tea in a few days and this would justify another trip to the market.

Biro retired relatively early (a little dilute Sweetsleep in his wine had seen to that. The Cat was beginning to feel almost arrogant about her sleight of hand) and the cupbearer went in search of her own clothes, knowing she could not spar in the thin, delicate dress the wealthy man had given her. She found Mattine's other brown dress ruined, basically having been shredded for cleaning rags. _Also at Lord Atius' command,_ she was sure, but her shifts were clean and she recovered her breeches and her Lorathi master's favorite blouse (likely because they were thought to belong to one of the guards rather than her, otherwise they might have met a fate similar to her more modest dress). The girl changed into her favored clothes in her chamber and then went off in search of Owen. She saw him in the garden, his back turned to her. At first, she thought to creep up upon him and see how far she could get before he discovered her (the girl continued this old habit; always with the tests, the task at hand was never enough) but then decided to creep up upon him in a different way.

Slowly and quietly, the girl pulled in a deep breath and closed her eyes. She gingerly allowed herself to mentally move toward the Faceless master, drifting lightly, barely touching at the edges of the handsome man's consciousness. She plucked just a small bit of a thought then retreated, only to return a moment later to gently pick another small bit. The information she gleaned in this way was disjointed and incomplete and therefore not terribly useful or coherent, but she was not immediately discovered. _That's something of an improvement,_ the Cat decided. The master's thoughts, at least the bits of them she managed to touch, became _her_ thoughts and in her own head, she processed what she received from him.

_...elder will certainly be most pleased that she was not harmed by Lord..._

_...are most subtle but he'd better continue to tread carefully, lest Tyto find..._

_...wrong to have involved him in this, especially since he hasn't even taken his..._

And then, finally, _...feels peculiar. Most peculiar. Where is the girl? Has she been in my..._

The Cat took that as her cue to step out of the shadows and reveal herself.

"Valar morghulis," the girl greeted the handsome man quietly as she approached him.

"Valar dohaeris, little wolf," the master returned. "How long have you been sneaking around the garden?"

"Long enough to wonder who Tyto is," she replied blithely. If the handsome man was surprised, he did not show it, but merely gave her his characteristic smirk and then shrugged lightly.

"No one you need concern yourself with, _lovely girl_. But I thought I warned you to stay out of my head."

His use of her master's customary address in that sarcastic tone rankled the Cat, emboldening her reply to the handsome man.

"You did," she agreed, looking at him slyly. "But if I had warned you not to hit me with the flat of your blade while I was blindfolded, would _you_ have listened to _me_?"

"No," the handsome man answered, "but then, I am a master, teaching an important lesson to a pupil."

"Just so," she conceded. "You may consider yourself instructed in the subtle art of mind-reading. Is this not also an important lesson?"

"I see your master was not exaggerating when he complained of your insolence."

"My master complained of my insolence?" she asked, surprised, and perhaps a little hurt. The man's smirk reappeared and he made no answer. The girl had a sudden feeling she'd just been tested. Or probed. _What intelligence had the handsome man gathered from her response?_

The master carried no sword for her and when she asked where her weapon was, he told her she would have no need of it. He planned to instruct her in the finer points of hand-to-hand combat and shore up her skills. She scoffed, saying that she knew how to brawl already, having learned that in Flea Bottom as a young girl. _And then she had a fleeting, unbidden thought; an old memory... a fine, brown dress, embroidered with golden acorns, worn by a fierce little girl scrubbed pink, struggling against a much larger opponent, rolling in the dirt of a hard-packed floor. Not a true brawl, but a fight nonetheless. She had held her own, but in the end, had been defeated amidst a torrent of damnable tickling..._

"I am not speaking of brawling, foolish girl."

"If my enemy is equipped with a sword, what good will my fists do?" the Cat challenged.

The handsome man tossed her his sword, inviting her to attack him.

"I'm not just talking about your fists. Make your move, and I'll show you how useful these skills can be."

The Cat grinned, relishing the heft of the master's longsword. She circled him leisurely, sword at the ready, as he watched her, his thumbs hooked casually in his swordbelt ( _is that some sort of required stance once you take your vows?_ she wondered, her internal voice an irritated growl) but his eyes were wary. _Swift as a deer,_ the girl lunged at the handsome man, thrusting his own sword straight at the center of his gut. He moved deftly to the side of the thrust and then instantly lunged himself, launching toward her when she had expected retreat. Before she could react, the master had stuck his one foot between her own two and then pressed the side of his knee against her thigh, spinning around to her side. He was too close, _on her,_ and her sword was too long to be of use with no distance between them. She had barely had time to form the thought before he was sweeping his other leg at the back of her knees, forcing them to buckle. She flew forward and fell over the leg he had pressed against her thigh. Her grip released the sword involuntarily and the blade dropped to the ground as she thrust her hands out before her to brace herself against the fall. It had all happened so fast that the girl was stunned. The Cat hit the ground and after she reoriented herself, she rolled over, staring up at the smirking sellsword with his raised eyebrows that seemed to say, _There. You see?_ He was straddling her supine form, somehow having retrieved his sword from the ground before the girl could think to reach for it herself. The sharp tip of the steel was pointed at her heart. A slow grin crept across her face as she thought about what had just happened and a look that was a mixture of delight and malice flooded her false doe-eyes.

" _Show me_ ," she demanded.

* * *

The next seventy-two hours were spent in similar fashion to the previous twenty-four, with a girl alternating between poisoning, "curing" and then avoiding the wealthy man in turn during the day, and then sneaking out of her cell and into the garden each night to spar with the Faceless master who had found himself assigned to the manse for reasons _entirely to do with her._ The girl had still not solved the riddle of what _that_ meant, but she was glad of his presence because he had turned out to be a most excellent teacher. The Cat was also glad of the distraction the lessons provided, because she had not been able to find a plausible reason to leave the manse during the day to meet with her master (Lidia being cured, for the time being, of any desire to undertake an outing after the harrowing events of their last trip to Ragman's) and her nights of late had left her too little time for the trek to the temple and back. The pressing matters that needed discussing weighed on her and the only time she felt any relief from the burden of them was when she was sparring.

The handsome man had reiterated the lesson that the disadvantage of size could be mitigated by superior balance and agility, something the girl possessed in abundance. He alternated his lessons, sometimes arriving in the grove with swords, sometimes without, sometimes burdening her with impediments (the blindfold, of course, or binding her ankles or wrists to see if she could avoid his attack long enough to slip her bonds. Unfortunately, he was very, _very_ fast, and she had the bruises to prove it), and sometimes giving her other restrictions in the form of verbal instruction.

 _You can only use your right hand,_ he suddenly threw out to her mid-lesson once. Another time, it was, _You can only use a dagger, and you cannot throw it._

 _A dagger? Against your longsword?_ she had protested, to which he had replied that she should not forget that her own body was also a weapon. At that, the girl attempted to fell him in a manner similar to the one he had used the first night they sparred without swords (well, _he_ had sparred without a sword) but she only succeeded in getting herself ensnared, her back pinned against his chest, her dagger knocked way, and his sword at her throat.

"You should have known that I would have expected that move and would be able to counter it," the handsome man chastised her with a whisper in her ear after briefly making a _tsk-tsk_ sound. "Don't forget, little wolf, I taught it to you."

"And apparently forgot to teach me the counter," she huffed, sweat stinging her eyes as he released his grip on her.

"Indeed," the handsome man admitted. "Some secrets, a man would keep for himself."

The turn of phrase was oddly familiar and it danced at the edges of her memory, causing that strange falling sensation to bloom in her gut. To distract herself from her rising discomfort, she acted impulsively, something her opponent was not expecting her to do as he believed their sparring at an end. The girl swiftly bent her knees, lowering herself as she spun around toward the Faceless sellsword, and then drove her shoulder into his belly, low down. As she shoved herself forward into the taut muscles over his gut, it had the effect of lifting him off of his feet and then flipping him over her shoulder and onto the ground behind her. A second later, he landed with an indecorous, "Oomph!"

It was the Cat's turn to smirk as she angled around and looked down at the master, flat on his back, his head at her feet. He was staring back at her with an unreadable expression. The girl, wearing the haughtiest look into which she was able to shape Mattine's features, was all set to begin taunting Biro's personal guard when his hands shot up above his head, _quick as a snake,_ and grasped the girl's ankles. Before she could react with more than just a surprised squeak, she found herself prostrate in the grass of the grove, laid out next to her teacher, her nose nearly pressing against the side of his knee. Sensing the dance wasn't over, the Cat quickly rolled to her back but before she could spring up, the handsome man had already pinned her down to the ground, using his weight to hold her in place. His hands were wrapped firmly around her wrists, pressing them down so that she could not reach for any hidden blades.

"I always enjoy a little gloating myself," he told her casually, his false face mere inches from her own so that she could not help but see _his_ haughtiest look, "but I make a point to finish the job first."

The girl's look had changed from gloating to sour, her displeasure evident on her face, but it was a valuable lesson the master had just taught her, and one she would not soon forget.

"Still, you used your instincts and if not for that last small mistake, you might even have won. It was an impressive performance," the assassin admitted, and then added quite superfluously, "until you ended up flat on your back, unable to move."

The handsome man did not move to release her so quickly this time, but merely studied her false face and eyes for a few moments, as if trying to understand something about her. She was unsure what conclusion he reached when she heard him simply say, "Hmm." And then he hopped up and offered her a hand which she took. The Cat dusted herself off and regarded the master with something suspiciously like respect.

"Valar morghulis, master," the girl finally murmured.

"Valar dohaeris, little wolf," he returned, regarding her, for once, without a hint of a smirk on his face as the girl turned and walked away from the grove and toward the garden entrance of the wealthy man's home.

Having left the false sellsword in the garden, the girl returned to the manse and sought out a cloth and some cool water with which to wipe down her face and neck. She noted with some consternation that the rag she was using to refresh herself appeared to be a part of Mattine's destroyed dress. She then took stock of her supplies and realized she would need to visit the market on the morrow if she wished to continue feeding Lord Atius his preferred tea. The Cat also saw that she was dangerously low on feverfew and did not expect to find it readily at the market. _It appeared she would have to visit the temple tonight, but quickly._ Perhaps she might even see her master, if only long enough to tell him he should meet her in the market after breaking his fast in the morning.

* * *

Sneaking out of the manse had proven to be easy for the Cat. She hoped sneaking back in was just as simple, but she would worry about that on her return trip. For now, she needed to make haste across Braavos and avoid confronting any of the wretched _Bravos_ sure to be strolling around the town, menacing anyone naïve enough to be out of doors when the puffed-up imbeciles happened by (she did not fear them, though she wore no sword on her hip. She merely did not wish to be delayed.) She took the most direct route to the temple she could, moving like a shadow among shadows, garnering no notice from the few men and women who loitered in the dark streets. When the girl found herself finally back at the House of Black and White, she decided to scale the courtyard wall as a widow had done once before and walk into the temple through the back rather than risk running into any worshipers or priests in the main temple area. It was late, but it was not unusual for those seeking the gift for themselves to show up at the temple while the rest of the city slept. She had often been responsible for removing the corpses that spoke of this truth first thing in the morning when she was assigned to serve in the temple.

As the assassin's apprentice dropped silently from the top of the wall into the courtyard, she found the garden deserted, as she had expected it would be at this late ( _early?)_ hour. Swiftly, she moved down the path and entered the temple, hugging the walls of the corridors en route to the waif's workroom. She found what she needed there, stuffing the dried feverfew into a small pouch and putting the packet into the pocket of her breeches. Her necessary work done, she was determined to find her master.

 _Anxious to see Jaqen?_ her voice asked her sweetly.

 _Anxious for you to shut your stupid mouth,_ she returned, less than sweetly, and then was rankled when she recognized that she was really just telling herself to shut up. Again.

The acolyte noiselessly made her way through the hidden, back passageways to the masters' corridor and counted the doors as she floated past them like a ghost. _The ghost of Harrenhal,_ the girl thought with wry amusement. When she reached the fifth chamber, she placed her hand on the latch, wondering if she would find the door barred against her. She was pleased to find that it was not and pushed the door open carefully, stepping quickly inside and closing the door silently behind her. She turned to face her master's bed but the moon was hidden behind heavy clouds tonight and the small, high window did not allow in enough light for her to see her master in his bed. Recalling what had happened the last time she approached her mentor's supposedly sleeping form in the night, the girl hesitated, keeping her place across the room, not wishing to find herself either thrown to the floor or pinned to the mattress with a dagger at her throat.

 _Pinned to the mattress might not be so bad,_ her little voice chimed in suggestively, _save for the dagger._

She told her little voice what _it_ could do with that dagger and then directed her thoughts to her master's candle, murmuring "Nar 'amala" with a flick of her fingers. The wick of the candle on Jaqen's bedside table burst into flame and as the Cat's eyes adjusted to the light, she found herself staring at her master's empty bed, his covers undisturbed and smooth.

_Where in the Seven Bloody Hells was he?_

As the girl stood staring at the bed, her hands on her hips and a look of disappointment on her face, she heard something that chilled her to her core.

"Welcome home, Arya Stark," the Kindly Man greeted from her right. She turned to see him sitting in Jaqen's one chair, situated in the dim corner of the room diagonally across from the bed. His face was stony and his eyes were cold, giving him a decidedly less _kindly_ appearance than was typical for him. "Are you in the habit of visiting your master's chambers in the middle of the night?"

* * *

 _ **Trojans**_ **—** Atlas Genius

 _ **Outside—**_ Staind

 _ **Fade Into**_ _**You—**_ Mazzy Star


	42. Chapter 42

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to warn you that the time line is not exactly chronological and that some sections are told as flashbacks, though everything occurs within the same few hours. I hope you do not find it confusing!

* * *

 

_My girl, my girl, don't lie to me..._

* * *

The Cat slipped back into the manse in the predawn chill ( _quiet as a shadow,_ she heard Syrio Forel's voice say to her as she crept along, hiding in the shadows) and silently made her way to her chamber, hoping she might manage an hour or two of sleep before a cupbearer's presence would be expected at Biro's side. It had been a long walk back from the House of Black and White and her head was nearly bowed with all the cumbersome thoughts she had attempted to sort through on her journey. The exercise had proved to be fruitless—she was just as confused currently as she was when she left the ebony and weirwood doors behind her, finding no ready answers despite all her long pondering. Now, she found she was utterly exhausted on top of being conflicted.

She sighed, knowing that she really would need some rest if she expected to keep her wits about her while avoiding Lord Atius' grasping hands _and_ carefully altering the contents his cup. It would not do to overdose him (too soon!) and it would not do to allow him to corner her in his solar simply because she was too tired to remain sharp and to pay attention to his movements (and his _intentions_ ). Much of her plan hinged on _denying_ the man what he wanted of her until she was ready to deal him the final blow, and that _must_ happen at Lidia's nameday feast. If Biro was able to sate his desire for his tempting little servant before the appointed time, the wealthy man would be less-inclined to give in to his lust and follow her when she had the most need of his obedience.

The girl gritted her teeth, vowing to fortify herself against sloppy work. She could not allow fatigue or unrelated intrigues or her roiling thoughts about her master or even the _Kindly Man's_ opaque aims to undo her now. The apprentice had spent too much time and effort on her mission to let her efforts go to waste.

 _Just a little sleep,_ she thought. _That will make it alright._

Entering the enveloping darkness of her chamber, the false cupbearer did not whisper the words of Asshai that would have lit up the room because she was simply too spent to worry with changing into her shift for sleeping when she would only have to change into the inappropriately revealing gown her new master expected her to don to serve him in a couple of hours. Giving an exaggerated sigh, she pulled the pouch of dried feverfew from her pocket and felt for the table near her bed. Finding it, she dropped her package there and then kicked off her boots. In her bare feet, she shuffled heavily the few steps over to her bed, falling onto the mattress and burying her face in her pillow with a muffled groan of exhaustion. The acolyte breathed in deeply, trying not to think on all the things she had discussed with the Kindly Man that night. They had plagued her and occupied her thoughts completely as she journeyed from the temple to the manse, and she had not been able to settle them adequately in her mind. Now, it was nearly morning. _No, not nearly. It_ was _morning,_ she corrected herself. She would give these thoughts the proper consideration later, when she had gotten some sleep and could think them through logically. Until then, it would likely be a waste of her time to attempt to sort through the chaos in her head.

"Lovely girl," she heard from the far side of the chamber, the words murmured in a familiar purr, causing her skin to prickle instantly and almost painfully as her heart leapt into her throat. "Where did you sleep last night?"

"Jaqen?" the girl whispered hoarsely, rolling over and then sitting upright in her bed. She dropped her legs over the side of her mattress and pressed her palm against her thudding heart as if afraid it might beat right out of her chest if she did not prevent it from doing so with the pressure from her hand. "Is that you?"

She _knew_ it was him but still hoped that it wasn't.

And prayed that it _was._

 _I'm not ready to face him yet,_ the acolyte thought, but then, from deeper down, admitted wistfully to herself, _I have missed him._

The Cat was greeted with momentary silence and then heard the Lorathi's distinct voice murmur the foreign words she had only just decided against employing herself. Her taper flickered and the glow revealed that her master, wearing a false face, was seated in the chair he had occupied several days prior, when he had last visited her at the manse. She had walked right by him in the dark and had not noted him there. _I must be exceedingly tired,_ she thought abashedly.

"A man has waited," the disguised assassin stated quietly. It sounded _almost_ like an accusation to her ear.

Her heart was still pounding as he spoke his words and the girl looked at her mentor with Mattine's eyes, nearly expressionless. After a moment, she closed her lids in frustration and shook her head slightly. Jaqen could not understand the gesture and so he leaned forward in his chair and pressed her for the answer he wanted.

"A man would know where his lovely girl slept," he said evenly.

The Cat wondered how it was not completely obvious to her very observant master that she had _not_ slept. And the _concern_ in his voice... the _censure_... Where was that coming from? What had inspired it? His face was placid but his voice hinted at some _emotion_ , the reason for which she was having trouble placing. _Does he think I've been in Biro's bed?_ she wondered. With no small amount of consternation, the girl suddenly realized that she had hit upon _exactly_ what her mentor was thinking.

_Maybe she was getting better at reading him._

"I didn't," his apprentice answered and her words came out in a low growl. "Sleep, that is. I didn't sleep. I went to the temple. Looking for _you_."

Her own words were less of an accusation but still indicated the undercurrent of displeasure fueling her mood.

The Lorathi's face showed mild surprise at her answer. _She had gone looking for him._ Apparently, they had been at cross-purposes. _Why had she sought him out?_ he wondered. He studied her face, her tired posture, and her radiating irritation, trying to find some clue as to what had lured her forth from the manse and had her traipsing across Braavos in the dead of night, seeking him.

The part of the Lorathi that was a Faceless master knew that his apprentice must have had some pressing business or urgent matter about which she needed to consult with him and that it had been important enough to her for her to risk both Biro's and the principal elder's wrath by sneaking out of the manse and into the temple to find him. The part of him that was exclusively Jaqen H'ghar wondered if perhaps his lovely girl had simply craved to see him.

Well, _hoped_ more than _wondered,_ if he was being entirely honest with himself.

The Lorathi told himself not to be ridiculous; that the girl had merely needed his advice or help, not his embrace, and then he struggled to push aside his thoughts about the possibility that his lovely girl had _want of him_ and he had not been there for her. It made him feel guilty and buoyant all at once and that was no fit state for a Faceless Man to be in while sitting across from his apprentice. The assassin's false face betrayed nothing of his internal conflict as he continued to watch the corners of Mattine's mouth pull downward and her shoulders to slump lower than they already were.

Her frown announced her vexation as she muttered dejectedly that they had probably passed right by each other in the streets of Braavos but were too damned _Faceless_ to have seen one another. In truth, the Lorathi had been vexed himself after all his long waiting for her in her dark bedchamber, but listening to his tired apprentice grousing served as an amusing distraction for him, diverting him from his own frustration with having missed her for all these hours. She was such a walking contradiction, so much in conflict with herself all the time; here, an assassin completing a complex assignment on her own; there, a petulant child, pouting that her desires were thwarted by circumstance. Sitting in her bed, wearing her master's blouse with her own loose breeches, she was dressed as a man but unable to hide the fact that she was now a woman grown. She often complained of his treating her as a child and had insisted that she was capable of completing this mission without his help yet had sought out his counsel in the night.

Though he knew that as her master, these things should serve as a warning to him that she was not ready for what was to come and that he should do his best to help her resolve these issues once and for all (and had he _not?_ ), he had begun to understand just how difficult it was to marry the dissonant parts of oneself. Thanks to this one lovely girl, he now had his own discordant thoughts to puzzle out. Seeing her struggle with _hers_ delighted him in a way—partly because it felt like justice for her having ruined his peace and thrown him into the turmoil he now endured, and partly because her contradictions were a large part of what fascinated him about her. She was a goddess of glorious chaos, beautiful in her perfect wildness even as she strove for stillness and calm. As he listened to the Cat grumble about the drawbacks of being _too_ stealthy, he watched her expressions, heard the very _Arya_ way she phrased her complaints, and felt his own mood improve considerably.

_Ah. Lovely, lovely girl._

"Do not fret, growling Cat, a man is here now," Jaqen told her in a sort of half-comforting, half-japing tone, "but why did you seek a man out at the temple in the first place?"

She closed her eyes again, turning her head to the side, and brushed her cheek tiredly against her shoulder as if to scratch an itch. While the Lorathi watched the action and forbade himself to rise from his seat and move to her, the girl was merely hoping the motion would stimulate her enough for her to regain focus on what it was that she had originally intended to discuss with her master when she left the manse, bound for the House of Black and White. It was important, this matter of Olive and Mattine's relationship, but after her confrontation with the Kindly Man, her being surprised by finding Jaqen lounging in her bedchamber, and with her fatigue, she was having trouble remembering _why._ And, after all the elder had said to her, she wondered if she should discuss anything with Jaqen at all. She felt all of the old doubts creeping back in; the ones she thought she had laid to rest after she had pulled herself from the murky canal and confronted her master in _his_ bedchamber. _Could she trust him?_ During her journey from her master's bedchamber to her own that night, she had decided she would need to see him to know.

And, as if in answer to a prayer she had not realized she had prayed, here he was.

She considered the Kindly Man's words to her as she had stood before him in her master's own cell. She had felt completely out of sorts at having been _caught_ there, worried about what her creeping into Jaqen's room at night would imply to the elder. The principal elder had seemed in the past to hint that she should not trust her master. Her master, for his part, had perhaps even more subtly indicated that it was the elder who could not be trusted. When her mentor had just asked where she had been and why she had been there, the acolyte had briefly considered lying to him, but found she could not; _that she did not want to._ Despite everything she had heard, despite her confusion and her inability to settle matters to her satisfaction in her head on her long walk through Braavos, the girl felt driven to confide in this one man.

_Do you trust a man?_

_Only with my life. Only with my everything,_ a widow had thought that day at the inn, and that had not changed, no matter what she had heard that night; _no matter what she had been commanded to do... or, rather, not to do._

 _I trust you more than I trust any man alive,_ the Cat had told her mentor. And that meant she trusted him more than the Kindly Man, despite how sincere the elder had seemed with his cautions and his care.

She had wondered during her walk back to the wealthy man's home if the whole purpose of the principal elder's talk with her was simply to drive a wedge between her master and herself. She was not sure why he would wish to do such a thing, but she felt the truth of it nonetheless. However, rather than the distance from Jaqen that the Kindly Man had seemed to want for her to achieve, what had crystallized for her as she stood looking at her master, sitting there across Mattine's dim chamber, was that she trusted him implicitly. She saw him, and she knew.

_There was undeniably trust. And... something else._

The apprentice opened her eyes, the dark circles under them exaggerated by the shadows thrown from the flickering candle. She studied her master from across the room, his false face, that of one of the household guards—the one he had borrowed once before—looking plain and honest. Of course, Jaqen H'ghar was a man studied in the art of looking _plain and honest_ whenever it suited his purposes. Knowing this as she did, the girl had stopped looking to his face for answers and turned her inquisition inward, seeking the reassurance she knew she would get only from her very bones; _from her gut._ Turning her face upwards toward the ceiling, seeming to watch the dark lines of shadow cast by the rafters, the Cat asked herself the same question that her mentor had once asked her. _Do you trust a man?_

 _Of course you do,_ she assured herself. _You trust him more than you trust any man alive._

 _Because you are in love with him,_ her little voice added, and she wasn't sure if that was the best reason in the world to trust him, or the worst. But she could not think on _that_ now. There were more pressing matters to address.

"There's something I need to tell you," the girl started, her false face grim as she pulled her gaze down from the rafters and settled it across the room, resting her eyes on her master. "I don't think you're going to like it very much."

* * *

_"Welcome home, Arya Stark. Are you in the habit of visiting your master's chambers in the middle of the night?"_

_She commanded her heart to be still as she stood facing the Kindly Man and the cold that crept up her legs and settled in her chest reminded her of the painful, frozen feeling she experienced in her nightmares about the crypts of Winterfell. The elder had risen from his seat and approached her and it felt to her as if his piercing eyes could see straight through her; as if his ears could detect the very pounding of her heart behind her breast. He stood so close to her that she had only to reach her hand forward a spare few inches to grasp the folds of the soft black and white robe that adorned him. The Cat resisted the urge to take a step back and give herself more distance from the principal elder. She was sure that such a show would signal some sort of failure on her part; a weakness or a lack of whatever it was he was testing her for by taking up this position too close to her._

_He was awaiting her answer to his question._

_"I don't make a habit of visiting my master's chamber, no," the Cat answered. "In the middle of the night or otherwise. Do you?"_

_It was, perhaps, not the wisest of choices to challenge the Kindly Man in that way, but she found the urge to do so too strong to control. After all, as he had pointed out, it was the middle of the night. Why was the principal elder sitting in Jaqen's chair at an hour when they all ought to have been asleep?_

_He did not answer her, but merely regarded her with his typical kindly expression (which, considering the circumstances, she found a bit disconcerting) and then spoke again as he gazed at the burning candle._

_"I see your master has instructed you in the mysterious powers he learned during our time in Asshai," the elder commented._

_"_ Our time _," he had said, and the words hung in the air between them. Jaqen had traveled to Asshai with his master, she realized. What Jaqen knew of the talents and tricks of the healers and sorcerers and shadowbinders, the Kindly Man also knew._

_"What three new things has a wealthy man's cupbearer learned during her time away from the temple?" he asked the girl in his customary way._

_The Cat knew that his words were a summons; an invitation to play a game with him, but the stakes were so high, she was unsure if engaging with the Kindly Man was the best course of action. There were many things she might say that would satisfy the requirements of this game but as she had learned from her last such exchange with the elder, revealing the right three things would possibly help her learn as much as she revealed. Could she find out what he knew about Olive's familiarity with Mattine without putting the wench (or herself) in danger? She turned the idea over in her head, wondering how she could phrase her revelation without implicating the wench and incurring the Kindly Man's wrath. It would have to be handled with the utmost of care and she had a fleeting thought that perhaps she should simply wait until she could discuss it with Jaqen. But she felt very impatient to have her answers and before her stood the one man most likely to know them all._

_The principal elder looked at her with mild interest, expecting her answer. She was out of time._

_"I learned that a Westerosi mummer was murdered by a Westerosi assassin-in-training," she offered._

_"To deliver the gift is not murder, child," the Kindly Man replied, placing his hand gently on the Cat's shoulder in a fatherly manner, "and a girl's brother is no longer an assassin-in-training but is a Faceless Man in his own right. What else did you learn?"_

_So the Rat had completed his trial, the girl thought. She had already learned something from this game. It emboldened her even while the Kindly Man's touch unsettled her. She wasn't sure why his hand on her shoulder should have such a discomfiting effect on her, though. To Jaqen's chagrin, his apprentice had never been truly afraid of the elder and had avidly sought the man's approval over the years. Here, the Kindly Man had actually deigned to show her some... affection, was it? Fondness? Comfort? And it should have pleased her, she thought, but instead, it left her feeling an emerging sense of dread. The girl had no reason for it; no explanation. There was nothing but her gut to inform her of how she should react._

_"I learned that the second wealthiest man in Braavos is suffering from a disorder of the digestion and now, it seems, also a disorder of the blood."_

_"That is most unfortunate. I assume that these disorders will eventually prove to be fatal."_

_"In a roundabout way," the Cat commented._

_The Kindly Man smiled sadly, saying, "Poor Lord Atius. He is fortunate to at least have such a caring servant in his employ." Here, he gave the girl's shoulder a slight squeeze, almost as if what he was saying was sincerely meant._

_"Yes," the cupbearer agreed. "I shall certainly see to his every need."_

_"Only those needs which absolutely need tending," the elder instructed gently, but it seemed to her that it was some sort of warning. It was as if he was saying... something like..._

_The Cat lifted her eyebrows slightly in mild surprise as she landed upon a possible answer. How extraordinary!_

_Was he cautioning her against sharing Biro's bed? Not that the loutish brute would even bother with a bed, she thought with distaste. She found this warning to be very strange. It seemed everywhere she turned, someone in the order was trying to... protect her virtue. She understood why Jaqen concerned himself with such things. He was her master, and her de facto protector, having cared for her since she was masquerading as a small boy on the King's Road and then a little mouse in Harrenhal. But the Handsome Man with his timely intervention when Biro had her trapped in his solar and now the Kindly Man's admonition—these she did not understand. It was not unknown for a Faceless Man to use seduction as a means to an end. If anything, she would have thought the masters and priests and elders would expect her to be willing to complete her assigned task using any means required. Her body, like her mind, was simply a tool for Him of Many Faces to use to enact his will. That the Cat had no intention of giving herself up to the wealthy man was one thing, but for those among the order to seem to not only support but encourage (even demand?) that particular position seemed... out of character. She could not understand it._

_The girl's mind had drifted away from Jaqen's chamber as she considered the meaning of the Kindly Man's words but the sound of him clearing his throat in the most pedestrian of ways brought her back to the task at hand. His look was intentionally easy to read: he was waiting for his third thing. The Cat gave the elder a wary look and considered her next words carefully, her mind now in the kitchen of the inn, remembering her last conversation with the wench who served there._

_"I learned that the order allowed me to wear a face into a place where it was well-known and did so without warning me."_

_The principal elder lowered his chin slightly so that he was piercing her with his eyes. Their deep blue was rendered nearly black in the wavering shadow of the chamber and he made a musing "hmm" sound before he spoke, as if he was giving serious thought to her assertion and trying to determine the most suitable response. The Cat knew it was all mummery. He likely knew exactly what he would say before she had even finished speaking._

_"Such a thing would be an unforgivable oversight," the Kindly Man admitted blandly, his hand on her shoulder tightening its grip almost imperceptibly, "indicative of gross incompetence."_

_"That's exactly what I thought," the girl remarked, fighting not to squirm under the press of his fingers through her master's blouse. "Unless it was purposeful."_

_"What purpose could such a thing possibly serve, I wonder?" the elder asked in a curious tone, pulling his hand away from her to make a small questioning gesture, his palms turning slightly upward as he shrugged his shoulders._

_"What purpose indeed," was all she said._

_"Perhaps we should ask your master," the man suggested helpfully. "He secured the assignment for you, after all. As I recall, he was most anxious to get you out of the temple. He seemed concerned for your safety."_

_Was he attempting to cast blame on Jaqen? It seemed so, but it was difficult to tell for sure. With his bored tones and mild looks and weighted words, his intentions were as slippery as the eels in the canal, slithering and sliding against her, nudging her in this direction and that. All the while, she felt certain if she made one wrong move, they would eat her alive._

_"Yes, he was most concerned," the girl agreed. "He was worried someone might try to toss me into the canal again."_

_Jaqen's voice was in her head then, cautioning her. He had insisted the matter of her abduction was too delicate for her to interfere in, and that he would handle it, but the Kindly Man had invoked the plot, not her. Surely her master could not blame her for following the thread of the conversation, wherever it might lead..._

_The Kindly Man's face took on a gentle smile as he told the girl, "An acolyte of the Many-Faced god being fed to a school of large eels? That would be a most unfortunate occurrence."_

_"Indeed. Most unfortunate, especially for the acolyte. I am genuinely touched that you care so deeply," the apprentice told the elder without any indication that she was emotionally impacted in the least. It was a technique she had borrowed from him. It was difficult to tell for sure, but it seemed to her that he did not appreciate it. Imitation might well be a sincere form of flattery, but the Kindly Man picked out the small, stubborn tone of mockery in her words and gave her a slight frown before continuing. She could not say if he was hurt or merely piqued._

_"Of course I care deeply. How could you doubt that I would?" he asked with a voice as smooth as Qartheen silk. "Your safety is of the utmost importance to me. If you can just tell me what you saw that night, I hope that I can use that information to root out the perpetrators of this dastardly plot. I will not tolerate any harm coming to you under this roof, or any roof, for that matter, while it is within my power to prevent it."_

_The speech was quite expressive for the Kindly Man. She wasn't sure how she should interpret it, but she felt that he was prompting her to implicate her master. He must know that she saw a man with a wounded neck among her attackers. Was he asking her to reveal what she saw as a way to test her honesty or simply to give him an excuse to lay the blame at Jaqen's feet? The girl was unsure but did not wish to risk any unpleasant consequences for her master, so she did not admit to what she had seen that night. She merely shrugged and told him that it was too dark to see much and that the men were all robed and hooded, making them virtually impossible to identify._

_"Just so," he responded and though his expression and tone remained as noncommittal as ever, the girl sensed that he was unhappy with her answer. "In any event, I am most pleased that you escaped the canal unharmed."_

_The Cat believed the Kindly Man's sentiment was sincere. He seemed genuinely glad that she was unharmed. Did that mean he was not involved in the plot, or that he_ was _involved in it (which would mean he was also the mastermind of it) and that he had gotten the outcome he desired? Of this, she could not be certain. Why must he be so hard to read?_

_"Yes, I was quite lucky," she finally said._

_"Lucky? I doubt that highly," came the elder's mild response. The girl rolled his words around in her head. Every syllable that left his lips seemed fraught with meaning and importance. It was almost too much to keep up with. She had thought to get answers from him, but found he was leaving her with more questions. Was he saying that the outcome was actually_ unlucky _? Or that luck had little to do with the outcome? Not knowing what was safe to assume, she remained silent, waiting for him to speak again. After a brief interlude, she was rewarded for her patience._

_"It seems that we both have matters to discuss with your master but that he will not oblige us with his presence tonight," the Kindly Man said with a sigh. "Is there perhaps something that I can help you with?"_

_"Oh," the Cat said lightly, "You already have. So much."_

_"Very well," the Kindly Man said, looking at her keenly as he nodded his head slightly toward her. "There is one thing that you may help me with, too."_

_"Really?" she murmured, intrigued. "You have need of my help?"_

_"Yes, and it is something only you can give me."_

_"Valar dohaeris," the girl responded. "Name it and it is yours."_

_"It is your obedience, child," the elder informed her in a serious tone. "I would prefer that you make no more late night visits to your master's chamber. In fact, until you have completed your trial, I think it best that you have no contact with him whatsoever."_

_"No contact?" the girl repeated, unable to hide her shock at his words. She was certain she must have misunderstood the principal elder. "No contact with my_ master? _But how am I to continue training?"_

_"Were I you and my final trial was approaching, I would make use of the expertise of the master most available to me. Is there not a Faceless master residing in the manse with you?"_

_The handsome man, she thought. He wants me to train with him rather than Jaqen. But why? Is it truly just a matter of proximity?_

_Her look was decidedly perplexed. The Kindly Man regarded her expectantly, obviously waiting to hear her concession. Instead, he heard the smallest hint at her rebellion when she spoke._

_"May I not make use of them both? Why must I abandon my master?"_

_"I'm surprised that you are questioning me on this," the elder told her without the least indication of surprise in his bland tone. "We are here to serve the will of Him of Many Faces, not to satiate our own foolish desires."_

_"Is it a foolish desire to wish to complete the last days of training with the teacher who set me on this path?"_

_"That is not the foolish desire to which I was referring," he informed her and his words had the effect of piercing her heart. Even as she began to ask herself what the elder meant by his statement, she realized with dismay that she_ knew _._

_She knew, and he was right._

_As the Kindly Man gazed at the Cat, his look was doleful. He seemed to regard her as if she were too dense to understand the complexities of what was being required of her and indicated to her that it would be better for her just to accept his wisdom, even if she did not understand it. Then he tacked on a final, grim warning, couched as a platitude._

_"Obedience is a choice," he reminded her, as ever. After a slight pause, he then added, "And disobedience has consequences. For all involved."_

* * *

As the Cat left the temple and the Kindly Man behind, her mind was swimming with everything she had learned; with all of her unanswered questions; with the doubt it seemed the elder had attempted to cast upon her master once again; and with dismay at the principal elder's pronouncement that she not see her master until after she had completed her trial. If she was denied the opportunity to speak with Jaqen, how was she to discover the truth behind the misstep (if that's even what it was) of sending her into the inn wearing Mattine's face even though Mattine and Olive had enjoyed a close friendship? Could she trust any of this information to the handsome man? It seemed that the elder was giving her no choice in the matter, replacing her own master with another, but she still was not certain of the reason the Faceless sellsword had for being in the manse in the first place, and besides, hadn't he told her that he couldn't help her with her assigned task? That he had his own duties?

_But then he had indicated that those duties were entirely to do with her._

This was exactly the sort of problem the girl would wish to discuss with her master, seeking his wisdom while formulating her plan of how to deal with this new obstacle, but as the _new obstacle_ was that she was _forbidden_ contact with Jaqen, it did not seem that she would be able to solve her problem in her usual way. Was this some sort of required part of the trial? Did all acolytes lose their masters at the very end of their training, to ensure that they were capable of performing their tasks without constant supervision and guidance? That, at least, made sense to her, even if it was still _frightfully_ inconvenient, but she had no way of knowing if it was the truth. If Jaqen were here, she could ask _him_ , but then, that was the point, wasn't it? And certainly, the Rat had lost the handsome man near the end of _his_ training, just before he _earned his face._ Perhaps there was nothing sinister at all in the Kindly Man's commandment, and this was all part of a centuries-old ritual. She might not like it any better, but at least if this was the case, she would feel less _persecuted._

Just then, there was part of her which thought that a little _independence_ from her master might do her some good anyway. Whether the Kindly Man had meant to separate her from her master as a required part of her training or if the elder meant it for some darker purpose, the girl was not sure, but his action had a consequence which the Cat felt quite sure was not intended. Forcing her to separate from Jaqen had made her realize quite clearly that she did _not_ want to be separated from him. The girl tried feebly to convince herself that it was because she needed his guidance and trusted his judgment in Faceless matters beyond all others (her falling back on this justification was a logical course as it happened to be the truth). However, the Cat was finding herself less and less adept at stuffing down the thoughts and feelings she had found uncomfortable for so long. All at once, the truth began to rise to the surface, demanding recognition and she knew that it was not her need of her master's counsel that had caused her to recoil from the idea of abandoning him. _She simply had want of him._ Oh, how she _wanted,_ from deep in her very bones all the way to her pores. Her whole being was enveloped in and seized with her _want_.

_And the feeling terrified her._

Yes, a little distance… A bit of independence… Separation might prove to be the perfect balm that would soothe the burning she felt bursting forth from within her. But even as she tried to force herself to see the intelligence behind this idea, she rebelled against it.

A profound, bottomless, undeniable longing had arisen within her; a need to just _be_ with him; simply to exist in his presence, and have him exist in hers. It had been there, below the surface for quite some time, she realized. She had fought against it (oh, _how_ she had fought!) and disavowed it, so frightened was she by the idea of needing someone else; of _loving_ another person who might be taken from her, or who might choose to leave her. The fear was still there, that awful dread of what this acknowledgment would mean for her, but she could deny the verity of it no longer. To do so now seemed s _tupid._ How peculiar that it took an edict from the Kindly Man to make her admit to herself the truth of what she felt for her master.

 _This changes nothing,_ she thought, and she meant it.

 _This changes everything,_ her little voice informed her, and she knew it to be true.

The Cat walked briskly through the dark streets and alleys of her adopted home, thinking on how she could peacefully exist with this knowledge and not act on it. Her feelings were her feelings, there was no denying that (her lip actually curled in disgust and she rolled her eyes as she had that thought), but feelings were not actions and actions were what mattered. It was a man's actions which shaped his world, not his feelings. Jaqen had done nothing by _his_ actions to indicate that he reciprocated these feelings ( _and why would he?_ she admonished herself. _Stupid girl_ ) and she did not intend to make a fool of herself in the eyes of the one man whose good opinion she craved above all others.

_I trust you more than I trust any man alive._

_I love you more than I love any man alive._

_Ugh!_

The Cat battled herself the whole way back to the wealthy man's home, thinking about Jaqen; trying _not_ to think about Jaqen; thinking about the things the Kindly Man had said _about_ Jaqen; thinking of Jaqen, bare from his waist up, kneeling before her on the training room floor just as she jammed her fingers down hard behind his collar bone, earning his pained yelp (she smiled at that memory, though whether it was the thought of her master's near-nakedness or the pain she had caused that brought on the warm feeling, she was not sure. Probably a little of both). She decided that she would need to see her master in order to settle her mind about him; to know that she was not allowing her judgment to be clouded by this flood of damnable _feeling_ that had suddenly overwhelmed her. The girl had to be sure that her trust in him was real and not some insupportable notion born of the flush she felt creeping into her cheeks, the twisting sensation that spread in her gut, or the erratic fluttering of her heart in her chest. If she could but _see_ him, she would know. But with this new restriction placed upon her by the Kindly Man, how was she to do this?

When she arrived at the manse, she slipped around the side of the outer wall which guarded the grove of the garden. There in the dark, as she scaled the high wall, she used her dagger to assist her in getting a handhold in the places where she might have otherwise slipped, jamming the blade into the crumbling mortar. Before long, she had overtopped the wall and found some sturdy tree branches on the other side to aid her descent into the wealthy man's garden. The girl dropped to the ground beneath the limbs of the fruit trees and surveyed the dark grove. _Empty._ As she gained the path that would lead her to the manse, she spotted the Faceless sellsword guarding the garden door to the house. _How fortunate._

She approached the door and saw the handsome man's smirk, apparent even in the shadows.

"Valar morghulis, little wolf," he greeted quietly. "How is it that a cupbearer finds herself in Lord Atius' magnificent garden when the whole of the household is asleep?"

"I needed some air," the Cat replied in a carefree tone, shrugging slightly.

"Was there a requirement for that air to come from the temple of the Many-Faced god?"

She narrowed her eyes and looked at him and to her extreme displeasure, he laughed. _How did he even know she was gone? Had he checked on her? Or seen her leave the manse? She had felt so certain of her stealthy escape._ She knew that if she asked him, he would not answer her, so she did not waste her efforts on interrogating the master. _Her new master._

"I have to get some sleep," the Cat told him. "It has been a long night and it's sure to be a long day as well."

"Just so," the handsome man agreed. "I certainly hope you are able to get the rest you require, little wolf, but I do not hold out much hope for it."

Here, he smirked again.

 _Seven hells, what is he on about?_ the girl wondered, her furrowed brow indicating her lack of understanding.

"Good night, _lovely girl_ ," he cooed after her as she slipped past him and entered the manse. She made him no answer but her shoulders stiffened a bit at his use of her master's words. This caused him to laugh softly, a sound she hurried away from, heading toward her cell. Only moments later, in the heavy blackness of her chamber, the handsome man's borrowed endearment was echoed by the Lorathi assassin who sat in her chair, cloaked in darkness.

"Lovely girl, where did you sleep last night?"

* * *

"There's something I need to tell you," the Cat told her master as she let her gaze drift to his false face. "I don't think you're going to like it very much."

Jaqen raised his eyebrows, but made no other movement, awaiting her words.

"When I went to the temple, the Kindly Man was waiting in your bedchamber."

"A girl went to a man's bedchamber?" he asked lightly.

"Well, as late as it was, that's where I figured you'd be, and I needed to speak to you."

"You have not yet said about what," the Lorathi noted.

The girl clenched her jaw and looked upward again, sighing heavily. She dropped her tired head into her hands, shaking it back and forth, wondering to herself if she had not gone to the temple to seek Jaqen's counsel about the problem with Olive, would she have encountered the Kindly Man at some other point or might he have used the handsome man as his envoy to warn her against further contact with her mentor? Or would she never have received such instruction? If she had not had her interaction with the elder, might she still be happily in turmoil, bickering with her stupid little voice about what she did or did not feel, or would she still have come to admit to herself that she loved her master and given up the relative comfort of her (somewhat willful) ignorance? _What if, what if, what if!_

"There's so much, Jaqen. So much..." the girl groaned through her fingers.

"A lovely girl is so tired," her master remarked, his voice full of sympathy, and although he wanted to rise and cross the room so that he might wrap her in his embrace, he instead kept his seat and ignored the pull he felt toward his apprentice. "Perhaps a girl should get some sleep and save this discussion with her master for later."

The Cat growled in frustration and then, dropping her hands into her lap while she hung her head, said, "That's the problem. There _is_ no _later._ "

Jaqen pursed his lips and raised one eyebrow, waiting for his apprentice to explain herself.

"The Kindly Man forbade me to see you," the girl revealed, and then, mimicking the principal elder, she continued, " _and disobedience has consequences. For all involved._ "

"The principal elder told a girl that she may not see her master tonight?" the assassin asked, his voice revealing his confusion.

" _No_ ," the girl corrected, "He said I may not see you until after I have completed my trial!"

Jaqen had obviously been caught off guard and there was no mistaking the look of dismay on her master's false face. His apprentice found his response disturbing. To her, his look signaled that the Kindly Man's commandment was not a usual thing in the House of Black and White, near the time of the final trial or otherwise. _This meant it had been declared solely for her benefit. Or her detriment._ But perhaps she was mistaken. She _hoped_ she was mistaken.

"I thought that it was perhaps a traditional part of the trials... that all acolytes had to give up their mentors as the end of their training neared, as a way to demonstrate their independence..."

The Cat's voice trailed off as her master's expression clearly demonstrated that this was not the case. The Lorathi rubbed his forehead and then stood from his chair to begin pacing. The behavior was familiar and it meant that he was thinking. The assassin remained silent, however, and the girl was left to guess at his thoughts. She had no wish to add to his burden, but their time was short and she did not know when she might next have a chance to speak with him again. It certainly would not be before Lidia's nameday feast. The Kindly Man's decree that she have no contact with Jaqen was not the only problem she needed her master to consider.

"Jaqen," the girl began tentatively, watching as her master's steps slowed and then stopped in response to her voice. He looked at her, his arms crossed over his chest while his fingers tapped restlessly against his ribs. "Were you aware that Olive and Mattine knew each other when you gave me this face and sent me into the inn?"

The Lorathi's expression was stony but his eyes narrowed slightly as he regarded the cupbearer. He shook his head quietly for a moment and then spoke.

"This is not possible."

"I assure you that it is. Olive told me herself. She and Mattine were very close. Mattine told her that she planned to barter with the order for Biro's death."

" _This face is the most logical choice_ ," he muttered to himself. " _They are sisters. Biro will likely be unable to resist that_."

"Jaqen, what are you talking about?"

"This is what a man was told when he discussed a girl's assignment with his own master."

The girl pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger, mulling over Jaqen's words as she squeezed her eyes shut for a spare few seconds. When she dropped her hand, she began nibbling her lip softly.

"The Kindly Man picked this face for me? _Not_ you?" the Cat clarified after a minute.

"Just so. A man argued with his master a bit because the face was so new. You will recall how difficult that made it for a girl who took on the face."

_Oh, she remembered._

"So, do you think that the Kindly Man knew that he was giving me a face that would be recognized?"

"Lovely girl, there is no doubt that a man's master knew this thing. The question is, why? Why do such a thing?"

_Why, indeed._

Jaqen seemed to be playing back the memory in his head, muttering about how readily the waif and the elder had agreed to let the girl take over the assignment and about how the elder had been very specific about which face the girl should wear. The _reasoning_ had been sound and the Lorathi could not argue with it though he did not wish to give his apprentice such a fresh face, worried as he was about the effects it would have on her. The Kindly Man had chuckled at that, he recalled, saying that if there was anyone capable of handling such a transition, it was his apprentice. The Cat's voice pulled him from his recollections and he walked over to her, standing in front of her as she spoke. He kept his distance, stopping slightly more than an arm's length from the girl.

"What are we to do?" she asked him and his heart clenched a little at the despair he heard in her voice. She asked and he knew she was thinking of splashing through the dark waters of the canal and wearing a face that was sure to be recognized and being forbidden to see her master and all the other unknowns and dangers that were swirling around her like a great whirlpool. In an instant, the careful distance between them dissolved into nothing and he was pulling her from her bed, wrapping her tightly in his arms, shielding her with his body. The tiniest flicker of joy at his touch burned inside of her and for the briefest of moments, the girl forgot about all that plagued her just then and thought, _I could stay like this forever._

"Worry is not for us, lovely girl," Jaqen whispered into her false curls, pressing his splayed hands more firmly into the small of her back. "It will not be long now. A girl's trial approaches. While you finish your task here, a man will find the answers to this puzzle of a girl's false face."

Her cheek was pressed over his heart and she moved her own hands up from his waist, where she had initially rested them, to his chest, clutching at the guard's uniform he wore, wishing to draw him closer though there was not even the smallest breath of space left between them. The slow, pressing movement of her hands as she drew them up his trunk to rest them on his chest wrenched a shudder from deep within him. The Lorathi stilled himself, drawing in a deep breath. The Cat thought he must be reacting to some memory or concern about the endless plots and intrigues that surrounded them. She wished she could soothe his troubled mind, comforting him even as he was comforting her.

"A man would have you finish this thing that has been given to you to do," he told her. _So that he might once again look upon your true face,_ he did not say.

"The feast is four days away," his apprentice murmured and then yawned widely. "Assuming I don't die of exhaustion today, I'll be returning to the temple after that."

"A lovely girl must sleep," her master purred, reluctantly releasing her from his arms, thinking as he did, _a man could hold this girl forever._

"I _can't_ ," she almost whined. "I have to be in the small hall in just over two hours. If I go to sleep now, I don't think I'll wake up in time."

"A man will stay," Jaqen assured her. "A man will wake his apprentice up in time."

He guided the girl back to her bed and drew her sheet over her as she settled her head against her pillow. Despite all that had troubled her that day, she was asleep nearly instantaneously. Her master moved to extinguish her candle, but then paused to watch her for a moment. When she was not dreaming her wolf dreams or having nightmares of being devoured by eels, a peace settled over her during sleep that she never achieved in her waking hours. Awake, the girl was turbulence made flesh, her body nearly vibrating with her wild unruliness. _She was a goddess of glorious chaos,_ he recalled having thought earlier. But not in sleep. In sleep, she was still. Settled. _Untroubled._ In sleep, she regained her lost innocence of childhood. In sleep, she displayed the serenity of one who had not been touched too much by the cruelties of the world. In sleep, she was not an assassin or an orphan or a pawn in anyone's game. In sleep, she was simply a _lovely girl._

Jaqen knelt by her bed, folding his arms, one atop the other, and placing them on the edge of her mattress. He used the cushion they created as a place to rest his chin and watch his lovely girl as her even breaths caused the slow rise and fall of her chest. As he watched her placid face, he wished he could somehow preserve this state for her. He wished he could prevent her from being wounded any further by the world and that he could protect her from the storms which always seemed to rage around her, wherever she went. As he thought on this, an idea began to take form in his head and he could not push it away, no matter how hard he tried to dismiss it.

It was the idea that he was older than she, and was a man who was almost world-weary while she was hopeful and young; _so very young._ It was the realization that he had been a servant of the Many-Faced god for more years than she had been alive and that he had delivered the gift for the first time at such a young age, and so many _more_ since then, that no matter what else he might wish to be, he would always be _first_ a dealer of death. It was the recognition that she was not ready; that she did not _understand_ what it meant to be a man's lover; a man's other half; a man's _everything,_ and that he must wait for her. It was the fear that their duty, their obligation, their _service_ would part them and that as he waited for her, she might simply pass him by, leaving him behind as she grew into herself and became the splendid creature she was destined to be. He must wait for his lovely girl. He must wait for her to discover her feelings on her own, if they were to be trusted. He must wait for her to accept what those feelings meant without guiding her interpretation, if he was to have what it was that he desired most. He must wait on her _to come to him_ , and never nudge her in his direction while he accepted that _in waiting_ , he was risking that this thing might never come to pass and that he might well miss his chance to be with her; to have her and to be complete in her.

He was powerless to do else but wait and hope. There was a pain that he felt acutely just then. It was the pain of his hope crashing against the uncertainty of the unknown. The bite of it was cruel, and it left an ache deep within his chest. He dropped his face down, pressing it into his arms as they rested on the bed, mere inches from his lovely girl's warm arm. He shut his eyes tightly as he breathed his familiar prayer.

"Arya Stark. Do not take her from me."

The assassin rocked back on his heels and stood, laying the back of his hand gently against his lovely girl's false cheek. He blew out a long, measured breath and then extinguished the candle, waiting for the dawn to come.

* * *

 _ **Where Did You Sleep Last Night—**_ Nirvana

 _ **I Will Wait—**_ Mumford and Sons


	43. Chapter 43

The Cat felt as if she hadn't slept at all when her master gently shook her awake.

"It is time for a lovely girl to dress," Jaqen hummed to her softly, his honeyed voice at odds with the annoyance the girl felt at being awakened. "A cupbearer has work to do."

The girl groaned, rolling away from the voice exhorting her to open her eyes but the Lorathi was having none of that. She heard his soft chuckle and then felt his hands on her shoulders, turning her back over and then forcing her to bend at the waist, lifting her back from the mattress. She found herself in a seated position, very much against her will. Only then did she crack one eye open, squinting through the blur of sleep to see Jaqen's false face hovering in front of hers. He was sitting next to her, facing her as he held onto her shoulders, preventing her from dropping back down to her pillow and pulling the covers over her head as she felt a strong desire to do.

"A man has let his apprentice sleep for as long as he could, but a girl really must dress now, unless your wealthy man does not mind his cupbearer arriving at table attired in breeches and a borrowed blouse."

The Cat gave another abbreviated groan of protest but rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands and then reluctantly stood. She cast her eyes about her room without a word, searching for the wispy frock that was her uniform. She found it puddled on the floor at the foot of her bed and shook it out, inspecting it for stains. _Clean enough_ , she thought, and then she caught Jaqen's frown.

"Where is Mattine's dress?" the Lorathi asked in clipped tones.

"This _is_ Mattine's dress," the acolyte said in disgust. "The others were destroyed."

"Destroyed?"

"One, quite purposefully, by the laundresses," the girl replied, remembering how she had found the dress cut up into rags. "The other was the unavoidable consequence of fighting your brother while blindfolded."

"A girl has been sparring with a man's brother?" her master asked casually.

"A girl has been sparring with her _new master_ ," the Cat corrected with chagrin, reminding her mentor of the Kindly Man's decree that she receive her remaining instruction from the handsome man. _Were I you and my final trial was approaching, I would make use of the expertise of the master most available to me. Is there not a Faceless master residing in the manse with you?_

Jaqen's face had an air of thoughtfulness about it, as if he was carefully considering something. He cocked his head to the side as he looked up at his apprentice's face from his position seated on her bed. Leaning forward, he placed his bent elbows on his knees and pressed his face into the pyramid formed by his hands. His eyes were veiled; she could not tell what he was thinking, but knew enough of him to know his look signaled some degree of _concern_.

"You obviously have to tell me what you're thinking," she snapped at him, exasperated. "Although I try very hard, I still cannot read your mind."

The assassin rose from his place on the bed and walked to where his apprentice was standing. He took the gown from her and tossed it onto the mattress behind him carelessly, so that her hands were free. Taking her now-empty hands in his, he stroked her knuckles with his thumbs, his eyes resting on the white flesh he caressed as he sighed. He was still _thinking;_ carefully considering _something._ She could barely control her impatience.

" _What is it_?" she almost hissed at him.

She truly did not mean to be so harsh, _especially_ not to him, but her mood was foul due to her inadequate sleep and her heart was pounding uncomfortably in her chest as she thought about the fact that when her master left her chamber in a few moments, she was not supposed see him again until she was ready to take her vows. The whole idea made her feel a bit sick. The girl fought hard against her rising panic, not wishing for Jaqen to think her weak; indeed, not wanting to _be_ weak.

_Honestly! He was gone for eighteen months and I survived,_ the girl thought, trying to find the stillness that she had been without since she had learned the truth about Olive and Mattine.

_You didn't know that you were in love with him then,_ her little voice reminded her unhelpfully.

"A man expects you to return to him unharmed," the Lorathi began.

"Not this again, Jaqen," the Cat groaned. "I am mindful of your concerns, but I thought you _understood_. I have no fear of Biro."

"A man does not refer to Lord Atius, impatient child!" her master growled at her, irritated at having been interrupted. "You should recall that there were _four_ men who bound and gagged you and left you to drown."

"I recall that very well," the girl huffed at him, grumpily attempting to tug her hands away from her master but finding that she could not escape Jaqen's grip.

"Indeed? Well, does a foolish girl _know_ who all of these men were?"

She bit her lip and looked instantly thoughtful. After a moment, her aggravation seemed to melt away and her face softened as she turned her eyes upon her master, gazing at him through the thick fringe of Mattine's dark lashes. Her false eyes seemed almost to glisten, as if unshed tears had polished them to a bright sheen. Her master knew it was a ploy; he _knew_ there was almost no circumstance under which his apprentice would display tears, unshed or otherwise, and that she merely sought to bend him to her will with all her subtle enticements. He _knew,_ and he _still_ could not be certain that he had it within him to resist her.

"Jaqen, do _you_ know?" the girl asked him plaintively, her voice as soft as drifting snow.

_Do you know what you do to a man, lovely girl?_ the assassin wondered, his fingers curling themselves more firmly around her hands as he explored the depths of her false eyes and waited for a moment before answering his apprentice.

"Not for a certainty," he sighed. "Not yet. But a man would have you be cautious. You will remember that your _handsome man_ is the Westerosi boy's master."

There was an implication in her master's words; in his _tone._ He was not accusing his brother outright (and _would not_ do so, at least, not without real proof), but his feeling about the matter was unmistakable as his gaze bore deeper into the girl, trying to imprint her with his want of her caution.

"No," she said immediately, shaking her head. "No, he wouldn't have..."

The tone of certainty in the Cat's voice gave her master pause. His apprentice seemed to be saying she did not think his brother could be involved. She sounded _convinced._ What had his brother said to her to garner such trust? How much interaction had they truly had? Enough, apparently, that she would leap to the _handsome man's_ defense. His gaze turned thoughtful again and he tried to read in Mattine's features any hint at her feelings about his most _handsome_ brother. He found nothing there, but a small, heavy feeling tried to creep around his heart, causing a clutching sensation that he dismissed by the sheer force of his will. Before it disappeared completely, however, his brain has seized upon it and named it. _Sadness._

"Nonetheless, sweet child, you must exercise the greatest of care," the assassin admonished his apprentice gently. "You are so young, and knowing who to trust is not always an easy thing."

Though she wore Mattine's face, there was no mistaking whose scowl was directed at the Lorathi upon hearing herself called, once again, a "child" (sweet or otherwise, it made no difference) and having her youth blamed for her master's assumption that she didn't know who to trust. _But she trusted him, didn't she? She wasn't too young to know that Jaqen was trustworthy, was she?_

The Cat was suddenly much more determined to remove her hands from her master's grasp and jerked them away successfully, folding her arms over her chest as she sought to show him just how impeccable was her judgment.

"When I was in your bedchamber with the Kindly Man, it was _you_ whose trustworthiness was being impugned," the girl told him icily. "He suggested that you knew about Olive and Mattine and had given me this face anyway, without warning me of the possible dangers. I think it was his way of telling me not to trust _you_." The girl felt a sense of bubbling satisfaction when she saw her mentor's surprised expression. But then he looked... _upset_.

"Lovely girl, you know a man did not do this thing," Jaqen began, his brows knitted slightly. "A man would never put you in such a position without a warning. Surely, you cannot think..."

His apprentice felt a little guilty at her reaction to her master's discomfort. _Satisfaction? Ungrateful wretch. That was most unworthy,_ she chastised herself. She had only meant to show him that her judgment could be trusted; she had only meant for him to see that she had not fallen for the Kindly Man's attempts to undermine her master, so that he might understand that she was capable of discerning the truth from the falsehoods that swirled menacingly around them now like a dense fog. She unfolded her arms and this time, it was _she_ who took _his_ hands as she mimicked her master's oft-used turn of phrase while looking at him through false eyes filled with her true and undulating regret; sorrow for having made him think, even for one small moment, that she did not trust him completely.

"A girl knows."

Jaqen looked at the girl's false face and saw the pulsating emotion emanating from those doe-like eyes, and thought, _why so sad, lovely girl?_ He did not like to see her distressed in any way, and so he gave her his very _Jaqen_ look, half cool confidence, half flirtatious swagger, and began fiddling with the laces of his favorite blouse which hung loosely around his apprentice's neck.

"A girl has so little time left before she must be at the dead man's side," he purred in a perfect imitation of sympathy. "Will you be able to manage these complex garments, or must a man help you out of them so that you may dress in that whore's gown?" As if he really meant his offer, his fingers found the hem of the blouse and he began to pull it upward as if to remove it.

The Cat gasped and sprang backward, pulling the garment from Jaqen's hands. Her look of shock was _delicious_ and preferable to the regret with which she had only just been shrouded. Her master's laugh rankled her and she spat a choice bit of profanity at him as she invited him to leave her chamber.

"Maybe I should _thank_ the Kindly Man for forbidding me to see you!" she growled at him.

Jaqen feigned shock at her declaration and gasped, saying, "You _wound_ a man, lovely girl! Of all your sharp blades, your _tongue_ is your most deadly."

The girl glared at her master, irritated by the twinkle she saw in his false eyes, and she crossed her arms over her chest once again.

As he brushed past her on his way out of her chamber, he purred in his damnable Lorathi accent, "A man is most fortunate you did not open his neck with it that night in his bed."

The memory left her turning a most becoming shade of pink and as the master assassin walked through the cupbearer's door, chuckling, his only regret was the she wore Mattine's face and so he could not see the blush slowly color Arya's own lovely, pale cheek.

* * *

Due to the time she spent with Jaqen in her chamber, there was no time left for the girl to break her own fast and she had to fly to the small hall in order to be in place to serve Lord Atius in a timely fashion. She only beat the family to their breakfast by a minute and her skin was flushed pink from the rapid journey from her cell to Biro's table (and the flush was _not_ due to her lingering embarrassment at her master's words about her _tongue_ and how she had and had not employed it in the past, she insisted to herself. Her little voice merely laughed at her).

When the wealthy man arrived in the hall, the girl noted that he looked as tired as she felt. She then saw several small, purplish bruises on his exposed flesh and felt pleased that her ministrations were effective. When the Lady Vorena joined her husband at the table, her daughter and son trailing in behind her, the lady chastised Lord Atius for ruining a "particularly fine coverlet" with his blood.

"My dear, I can hardly help that I had a nosebleed," the wealthy man replied testily to his wife, sniffing as if to emphasize the compromised state of his nostrils.

"You certainly _can_ help that you have not yet called for a healer," the woman returned curtly. "I have been telling you for two days to see to this and now, you have ruined the fine linen of your bed coverings."

"I shall call for a healer today," the man acquiesced glumly, sighing as he inspected the dark bruises on his forearms.

"My lord," Mattine began quietly as she leaned down toward the wealthy man's shoulder, not wishing to draw undue attention but hoping to circumvent this plan to employ a healer, "my mother taught me a very effective remedy for nosebleeds. I'm told it's even better than my tea."

Before Biro could reply to his cupbearer, Lady Vorena gave the servant a withering look that drew the girl up short. Mattine straightened herself and took a step back from Lord Atius as his wife responded to the girl's offer. _Who could have known the lady's hearing was so acute?_

"A healer will be called and I will hear no argument to the contrary," the woman said firmly. "We will have proper treatment and not some gutter rat's useless remedy."

_So now I'm a gutter rat, am I? I suppose there are limits to a mother's gratitude,_ the acolyte sighed inwardly. _That didn't last long._

The wealthy man's wife seemed to wish to make the Cat's job (her _real_ job) harder but no matter, it was not anything that the apprentice could not handle. As the woman spoke, the girl's plans were set. _The healer, then. She would take his recommendations and treatments turn them on their head._ But she would need to make a trip to the market first. As she worked out how best to get what she wanted without resistance from her odious master, she settled on the _Cat Gut_ she carried on her person. Surely a man in the throes of pain would not object to his servant rushing off to the market to buy the ingredients for the one thing that supposedly soothed him. She had just enough of her ingredients left for one last crock of tea and then she would be unable to help her master further without having visited the market first.

Later, as Vorena instructed one of the household servants to fetch the healer and the Cat and another of Biro's guards helped the ailing man to his solar once again, the cupbearer was sure to mention to her lord that she would be unable to brew further tea without first purchasing the items she required for the recipe.

"Can't you send someone else to fetch them, girl?" the wealthy man asked irately through gritted teeth.

"My _lord_ ," the girl gasped in astonishment at his suggestion, "I would _never_ trust someone without experience to choose the ingredients I need to make the only remedy that seems to soothe you! I could not bear it if the tea became ineffective for your pain!"

It seemed that Lord Atius could not bear that thought either and so he waved her away to make her final pot of tea and then told her to be quick about her jaunt to the market, for he might _have need_ of her later. When he spoke about having _need,_ the girl felt his distressingly soft hands grasp at her waist and slip behind the folds of her gown that covered her belly, kneading the olive flesh barely hidden by the near-sheer fabric.

"Yes, my lord," the girl whispered, pulling away from him as gently as she could but not before he pinched her, eliciting a small yelp and marking her with a bruise even as she was marking him.

"Take Owen!" he rasped at her as he made his way, once again, to his privy, and Mattine nodded quickly, slipping out into the passageway in search of the Faceless sellsword.

_In search of her new master._

* * *

The Lorathi assassin made his way across Braavos, thinking about the situation beneath the wealthy man's roof as well as that beneath the roof of the temple. Both had a common element: the risk to his apprentice. Since his return from Westeros, and really, even before he departed and left his lovely girl in the care of his brothers and the order, Jaqen had worried that her inability to become _no one_ would result in some harm befalling her; that her stubborn refusal to live completely by the creed of the order and give up all that defined her _self_ would be regarded as unforgivable defiance and that she might find it cause for her banishment, or _worse_ (it was the _or worse_ that often interfered with his sleep and robbed him of his peace). Somehow, though, despite the strengthening of her tendencies to _do exactly as she pleased_ , the principal elder had not yet found the will to seriously punish her. Admonish, yes. Express definite disapproval, yes. But the girl had really not suffered any consequences of her actions. Her master was glad of it but in truth, he did not _understand_ it. It was as if her _Kindly Man_ was purposefully ignoring the fact that the girl refused to completely surrender Arya Stark; unwilling to sacrifice her _selfness_ on the altar of Him of Many Faces as was expected and _required_ ; as if the elder intended to _tolerate_ her deliberate disregard of the code of the Faceless Men indefinitely. In all of his years within the walls of the House of Black and White, Jaqen had never seen this occur.

All along, it seemed, the Lorathi assassin had been wasting his concern on the wrong thing.

If the Cat's faults were to be tolerated, why then was she nearly killed? If the acolyte's failings were to be indulged, why then did the principal elder spend time trying to make her doubt who she could trust? If the girl was not to be punished for her insolence and her lack of respect for the ways of the ancient order of assassins, why then was she now being denied her master?

Removing the Cat from the Lorathi's tutelage could only be detrimental to her preparation for her final trial. Suddenly replacing his own instruction with that of his brother was sure to confuse the girl at a time when her focus was most important. It was almost as if she was being set up for failure, yet Jaqen could make no sense of such a thing. There was no reasonable answer as to the _why_ of it.

_Why go to such lengths? Why allow her to train for years only to put her purposefully in the position to fail? Why heap unjustifiable and pointless stress upon her at the very end of her instruction?_

Not for punishment, surely; it was years too late for that—why bother now? Not for any _advantage_ to her; as far as her master could see, all that was occurring could only have a deleterious effect on the final outcome of her trial. Not to hobble her, surely; if the goal was to _deny_ her the chance to take her vows and enter the order, the simpler and more logical solution would be to bar her from the trials in the first place. Such a thing was well within the purview of the council, and hadn't he even begged for more time to train her? It would have been easy for the principal elder to delay her, effectively blocking her from entry into the guild.

Or, even to employ a more _permanent_ solution.

The Lorathi did not allow himself to dwell further on that idea.

This question of the principal elder's inexplicable tolerance or ignorance of the Cat's follies consumed Jaqen. He had once instructed his apprentice to heed her instinct and listen to her gut. _His_ gut told him that the plot against his lovely girl was tied up in the principal elder's strange indulgence of her shortcomings. The senselessness of it gnawed at him, prodding him to explain it all; demanding that he solve the riddle. Jaqen had thought of aught but this of late, having no time to spare for the consideration of other matters.

_Well, that was not entirely true,_ the assassin admitted to himself.

For instance, he did, on occasion, spare a moment to reflect on a lovely girl's bare, white shoulder and the silvered smoke of her eyes, glittering with malice as she considered what terror she would visit upon the heads of her enemies. _And a lovely girl did have so many enemies,_ he thought with a sigh, dismayed. Perhaps some of them even lived within the walls of the temple of the Many-Faced god, but thinking on the matter with almost no respite was starting to drive him mad. So, while waiting in a cupbearer's empty, dark chamber before her arrival there earlier this morning, Jaqen had instead thought of that shoulder and remembered those eyes and even managed to ponder the image of slender fingers curved over the shaded edge of a black stone bench as a girl turned her head to the side, her long, dark braid falling over one shoulder, laying her fair neck bare.

_Why do you look at me like you're sad all the time?_

_Some thoughts, a man would keep for himself._

The Lorathi assassin was at last climbing the smooth steps leading to the ebony and weirwood doors of the only home he remembered. As he pushed through them and left the bright daylight of Braavos behind him, he hurried through the gloom of the temple in search of his one-time master. He needed to find his lovely girl's _Kindly Man_. There was much they had to discuss.

* * *

There was a slight breeze blowing off the water, enough to move the curls of the acolyte's false hair slightly, but not enough to stop the bead of sweat that had formed at the base of her neck from trickling languidly down her back. The sticky feeling it created added to her aggravation which was mostly fueled by her lack of sleep as well as the vague, unsettled feeling that she had lived with ever since the Kindly Man had declared that the Cat was to have no contact with her master. The heat was amplifying her foul mood and as the Faceless sellsword reclined almost indecently next to her on the cushioned bench of Atius Biro's resplendent gondola, the girl felt herself more and more vexed at the handsome man's careless disregard for decorum. Somewhere in the back of her head, her little voice was laughing at the notion that _she,_ of _all_ people _,_ should be remotely bothered by a less-than-strict observance of such conventions as _decorum_ and _courtesy,_ but the stresses and uncertainties that were plaguing her of late seemed to simmer together in the mid-morning heat of Braavos and she found that the handsome man's careless lounging was just the spark to ignite the flame that set her temper to boiling.

_How could he be so relaxed when there was so much to trouble her?_ Her eyes narrowed to slits and she glared openly at Owen.

The girl was simply spoiling for a fight. It was apparent in her body language-the crossed arms, the set of her mouth, the way one of her false doe-eyes twitched slightly at every movement, every sigh, and every sound her companion made. He was either determined to ignore the signposts that clearly indicated her mood or else was blissfully unaware of them as he attempted to make conversation.

"The Lyseni acolyte has taken up his sword again," the handsome man reported as he gazed through the porthole nearest him and inspected the ships docked in the Purple Harbor.

"Good. He needs the practice," the girl returned sourly. If her companion had been looking at her instead of away from her, he would have seen the scowl on her face as she spoke.

"Just so," the false guard agreed, "but surely _your_ instruction has improved his technique some." Had he been looking at her instead of away from her, the girl would have seen that his lips were arranged in a sort of half-smirk and she might have been greatly tempted to strike him for the look.

"Humph," the girl sniffed. "I doubt that the Bear will ever be more than just competent with his blade, no matter who is instructing him."

Later, she would feel guilty for her indictment of her brother, _her friend_ , but presently, she only felt a sort of all-encompassing aggravation driving her words, giving them a bitter tenor that was not reflective of her true feelings but rather merely indicative of her current temper.

"Oh? What makes you say it?" the Faceless master asked casually. He wore a fine dagger at his hip and the way he was tapping at its hilt with his fingers, dropping each digit in rapid succession with an audible _click click click click_ of his fingernails against the metal, over and over without even looking at it made the Cat's breath leave her nose in short, forceful puffs. The faint sounds of her exhalations were reminiscent of a provoked bull preparing to charge.

"He lacks the sort of... innate qualities required to truly be great with a sword," she ground out, unable to tear her eyes away from the offensive tapping action, the abhorrent clicking seeming to grow louder to her ears with each subsequent repetition.

"I'm intrigued, little wolf. Pray tell me what innate qualities the boy lacks."

As he spoke those words, he turned to face her, studying her expression and reading her mood. He found himself amused at her current lack of grace. He had no idea why, but she looked as if she were ready to explode. _How far would he have to push her to see that fantastic eventuality?_

"Well... there's an intelligence to swordplay," the Cat began but was almost immediately interrupted by a great guffaw from her companion.

"How marvelous!" the master declared with a snort, clapping his hands together in delight. "What a trick!"

"What?" the girl demanded, narrowing her eyes and glaring at him again. "What are you talking about? What trick do you mean?"

"The trick whereby you open _your_ mouth but it is _your master's_ words which pour forth from it."

The Cat wasn't sure if she was more offended for herself or for Jaqen. _Myself,_ she decided. _He doesn't seem to be insulting Jaqen, just my ability to think for myself._

"So, is it _your_ contention that the Bear has the makings of a water dancing master in him?" she spat back at the handsome man.

"No indeed," the man answered her in mild tones, his laughter dying. "I believe the Lyseni has the makings of a _Faceless Man._ Has your master forgotten to instruct you of the ultimate goal of all your training or has he merely been filling your head with lessons on the intelligence required for swordplay?"

_Now he_ was _insulting Jaqen!_

" _My master has forgotten nothing,_ " the girl fumed through clenched teeth, sounding dangerous. " _He has no equal among the order."_

She looked at the handsome man pointedly after she spoke the words, a sneer on her face indicating how beneath Jaqen she considered the Faceless sellsword's skills.

"Oh? I seem to recall that he had not yet instructed you in hand-to-hand fighting skills."

The Cat's sneer turned back into a glare as the master needled her further.

"And I also recall that even with two swords at your disposal, a technique I believe your master taught you, I still managed to remove most of your dress with my blade the last time we sparred."

" _I was blindfolded!"_ the girl hissed.

"So, your master also forgot train you to fight blind?" the master inquired sweetly. "And he has _no equal_ among the order, you say? Hmm..."

She was seething now, her fingers itching to grasp the blade she had begun wearing at her thigh again. She scrabbled through her brain, fruitlessly searching for a single kernel of stillness that she might cling to and prevent herself from doing something stupid. _Calm as still water. Calm as still water,_ she repeated to herself. She was certain that the Kindly Man would not appreciate her murdering her _new master_ in Biro's gondola, especially not in full view of the boat's crew.

"How have I never noticed how horrid you are?" the girl growled.

"That is the wrong question."

The Cat turned fully to face the handsome man and fought to control the rage that threatened to overwhelm her as she demanded, "Why are you saying these things?"

" _That_ is the _right_ question," he replied, and his smirk disappeared.

"Well?"

" _Well,_ I'm astonished that you've come to this point in your training and yet still allow yourself to be undone by such minor japing and insults," he answered in a disappointed tone. She wasn't sure how seriously she should regard his disappointment but felt she had to defend herself anyway.

"I didn't get much sleep which has put me in a foul temper and I have a lot of things occupying my thoughts lately and…"

"Oh, no sleep? Well, no matter then. I'm sure your enemies will wait for you to be well-rested before they challenge you," the handsome man interrupted sarcastically.

"Talk about a _marvelous trick,_ " the Cat muttered. "Now who sounds just like Jaqen?"

The Faceless sellsword let out a great burst of laughter, saying, "Just so! But it's hard not to sound like him! If there is something to be said, he has already said it. He loves to talk, doesn't he?"

"No more than _you_ love to _smirk_ ," the girl shot back, somewhat defensively. She found that she did not like the handsome man's tone when he spoke of her master.

_Do you think Jaqen needs you to defend him?_ her little voice scoffed. _A cranky girl, sick with love?_

_I'm not sick with love!_

The master assassin cocked his head to the side and looked keenly at the acolyte.

"You _are_ very attached to him," he mused, almost as if he was agreeing with some prior assertion belatedly, yet they had never had such a conversation.

"Aren't _most_ apprentices attached to their masters?" the Cat countered, pointing her chin slightly higher in defiance. One side of the handsome man's mouth curled upward as he considered her words.

"Indeed. And now that I am your master, how do you think _we_ will fare, little wolf?"

_So he knew about the Kindly Man's decree already._

"Well, I don't expect that your words will pour forth from my mouth," was her rancorous reply. The handsome man watched the acolyte withdraw to the furthest edge of the bench, turning her face to look through the porthole there as she wrapped her arms around her middle.

"We shall see," he murmured.

* * *

"I had hoped to see you last night," the principal elder was telling the Lorathi assassin as they strolled through the courtyard garden. This time, Jaqen knew there would be no danger of the Cat overhearing their conversation.

"A man knows," the younger man replied quietly.

"Ah, I thought as much," the Kindly Man commented a little sadly. "It was my intention to discuss my decision with you before you heard about it _elsewhere_."

The assassin nodded, saying, "A man does not see what danger his instruction presents to his apprentice. What possible reason could his master have for removing her from a man's care?"

"It is not for her benefit that I removed her," the Kindly Man asserted calmly, "but for _yours_."

The Lorathi allowed his face to display the surprise that he felt at his master's words. Had the principal elder truly meant to protect _him?_ From a tiny girl? Surely he had misunderstood...

Before he could clarify the Kindly Man's meaning, the elder was explaining himself.

"I understand the appeal of the girl, truly. But no matter how fair the countenance or how irresistible the pull of her innocence may be to you, you are ultimately the servant of Him of Many faces. This girl represents a _dangerous_ distraction from your duties."

"It is a man's duty to train this girl," Jaqen countered, "and a man has done nothing... _would_ do nothing that would displease his god."

"Yes, brother, I believe that you believe that," the elder returned gently, placing his hand upon his former apprentice's shoulder, "but I only sought to remove the temptation..."

"A man is not tempted," Jaqen started but then his master stopped walking, causing Jaqen himself to halt. The elder probed the Lorathi with hard eyes that glinted like sapphires catching the noonday sun.

"No? Well, then, I am certainly glad to hear it," came the Kindly Man's mild drawl. "Very glad indeed, for you have always been a very devout servant. I would hate to think that your devotion to the Many-Faced god could be shaken by something as commonplace and fleeting as _desire_. Perhaps I was only misreading the situation. Perhaps your pursuit of the favor of this one acolyte has been less... hmm... _obsessive_ than it first seemed?"

"Pursuit of her favor?" the Lorathi asked, truly confused. "A man has only ever done what any master would do for his apprentice."

"I know of no other masters who have instructed their apprentices in the use of _blood magic_ ," the elder responded acidly.

"Save one," the younger man answered.

"I did _not_ instruct you," the older man reminded Jaqen. "You and I learned this art together and it was a requirement of the subterfuge we were weaving in Asshai. That is not the same thing."

"And it was _this_ instruction, the lessons of a few minor techniques of the sorcerers of Asshai offered to one girl, which has led a man's master to conclude that he is in danger of committing heresy?"

"That, and there is the matter of the special _gift_ you brought the girl from Westeros."

"Those men would have been marked for death by the Lady Stoneheart, anyway," the Lorathi explained coldly, not allowing defensiveness or surprise to creep into his tone. "There was no harm..."

"Valar morghulis," the Kindly Man interrupted, "but it is not their deaths that I question. Merely the gifting of their hearts to your apprentice."

"She had prayed for years for the gift to be given to these men. Is that not what the order does? Do we not answer the prayers of those seeking death? For themselves, for others..."

The Kindly Man shook his head, his eyes baleful, saying, "You disappoint me, brother. Your quibbling makes you sound more like _her._ Your words are the words of a young acolyte, not a Faceless master."

"A man will not quibble but he must know why this gift troubles his master. What harm, then?" Jaqen asked simply.

"The most harm there is," was the elder's measured reply. " _Becoming._ "

* * *

Being followed closely around the market by a Faceless Man pretending to be a former sellsword who was working now as a personal guard who had been given the task of protecting a beautiful young servant for whom a wealthy man had a mind to make his lover was taxing the Cat's already frayed nerves. She supposed the handsome man _had_ to follow her to the market for the sake of appearances, seeing as how the crew of Biro's gondola knew of the guard's purpose for accompanying _Mattine_ to the market but once there, she did not feel his presence was required and certainly not so nearby. He was practically at her elbow and though he did not speak to her, she felt his smirk resting on the bared flesh of her back as she chose and purchased the things she would need to continue making her _tea_. At one point, she whirled around and demanded to know what he was smirking about even though by the time she asked her question, _Owen's_ face was arranged in a respectful expression.

"Whatever do you mean?"

"Don't bother to deny it," she hissed. "I can _feel_ you."

"Truly?" he mused. "Perhaps you _are_ attached to me already. What are you planning to wear to spar in tonight? Perhaps I can coordinate..."

"Ooh!" the girl squeaked in frustration. "You really _do_ sound like Jaqen!"

"Don't be ridiculous," the master intoned with a sort of practiced disdain. "I don't have that absurd Lorathi accent."

There was nothing the acolyte could do but shake her head at the Faceless sellsword and then continue with her task. Biro wanted her back as quickly as possible and she needed to keep him happy for just a few more days. She should not be allowing this buffoonery to interfere with her schedule.

As the girl was selecting the ginger root she would need, something in the distance caught her eye. There was movement in a nearly abandoned corner of the market. It was the surreptitious nature of it that drew her; a sort of _sneaking_ noted almost unconsciously in her peripheral vision. She looked toward it casually, appearing to be sweeping her eyes across the market in search of the next goods she needed to buy, and was surprised to see that the furtive movements were being performed by none other than an almost-healed Bear and his paramour, Olive. The girl flicked her gaze to Owen to see if he had noted the pair but he was busy fingering some leather goods at the stall next to the root seller and did not seem to notice the Lyseni acolyte or his companion.

The Cat purchased the ginger and also some licorice and then slowly drifted past the next few stalls, her feet taking her further from the Faceless master who served as her irksome protection and closer to her brother and his love. _From the looks of it, they had made up for a certainty after the debacle at the inn with Lidia._ The Bear had Olive pressed into the corner of a dim and empty stall, placing fervent kisses over her cheeks, her eyes, her forehead, her ears, and her smiling mouth. Olive, for her part, had slipped her arms around the boy's sizable middle and seemed to be drawing him further into her. The Cat was fascinated and disturbed all at once. _Fascinated_ because she had never seen her brother so demonstratively enamored with anyone and _disturbed_ because, well, she had never seen her brother so demonstratively enamored with anyone. The Cat recalled the trepidation she had felt when the Bear had spoken of marriage and his feelings for Olive. Those sentiments were at odds with the creed of the order they served and though he had seemed to understand that point, it did not seem that he was particularly hampered by it at the moment. Not that there was anything wrong with kissing a serving wench in a darkened corner, she supposed, but it had not seemed to her that merely kissing a serving wench in a darkened corner would at all be satisfactory to her brother when last they spoke.

_Bloody hells, Bear, you really do think you're in love. Honestly, what am I going to do with you?_

_Shhh! I haven't told her!_

Mattine watched the tender way the Bear brushed Olive's curls away from her shoulder and then placed his head there, moving his lips against her neck as the wench shivered.

_I guess he told her,_ the girl sighed to herself. _She acts like a woman who has been told she is loved._

_How would you know?_ her little voice demanded and the girl wondered if Aerys _little voice_ had spoken to _him_ with such an air of ridicule and discourtesy.

The serving girl's pretty dimples appeared as the Bear whispered something in her ear and she slowly nodded her head _yes_ in a way that looked both seductive _and_ shy at the same time. _What had he asked her?_ The Cat felt a burgeoning speck of apprehension in her gut. She determined that she should speak to the Bear, but how could she with Olive right there? And she did not know when next she might see him. The wealthy man's feast was only a few days away and the demands on her time were great just then. She was not certain she could slip out again and make her way to the temple in the dead of night, but she resolved to _try._ She was somewhat responsible for the Bear and Olive, she knew. She had to keep her large brother from doing something that would endanger both himself and his love.

As Owen caught up to her, he asked Mattine if she was quite finished with her business in the market.

"I think I've seen everything I need to here," the girl replied softly.

* * *

When the Cat disembarked from the red and gold boat and made her way with Owen through Biro's famed garden, her new master told her that he would expect her in the grove at the usual time. Some mention of blindfolds was made, along with a jab about "making up for lost time since her master had not bothered with teaching her using this technique." The apprentice frowned but merely nodded her understanding of the fact that she would be expected after her evening duties were completed and stalked off toward the house. Biro would be wanting his tea.

The cupbearer went first to the kitchen to brew a pot and overheard the cook and a serving girl talking about the healer's visit to the manse. Apparently, the man had already come and gone and had admonished the wealthy man for eliminating certain foods from his diet. It was the omission of eggs and greens that had triggered Biro's bruising, the healer insisted. _Well, yes,_ the Cat thought, _but not just that._ As the cook related this bit of intelligence, she looked slyly at Mattine, sneering as if daring the girl to contradict her. It had been Mattine, after all, who had delivered Lord Atius' request that those foods be left off his plate once his stomach troubles began. As for those stomach troubles, the healer insisted it was the _wine_ rather than certain other foods that had led to the cramps and looseness of the bowels and he forbade Biro from indulging in spirits until after he had been free of symptoms for at least half a moon's turn.

_This would not do at all._

The Cat had been expecting these results and was mostly grateful that the healer had not invoked the idea of _poisons._ The girl felt confident that with careful application of her Cat Gut as well as her diluted Sweetsleep and tea, she could undo all the good the healer had done. The only thing left for her was to get Lord Atius to drink from his ornate wine cup. Of late, he seemed to be favoring the solid pewter set but she required the glass. Unfortunately, she would probably have to endure another split lip to get it.

_Oh, well,_ the cupbearer thought, _it can't be helped._

Her brew completed, Mattine carefully carried the steaming pot to her master's solar and timidly knocked on his door. When his voice bade her _enter,_ she pushed through and announced that she had his tea for him. She found the wealthy man reclined on his couch with a plate of everything she did not wish for him to eat displayed tauntingly before her on his table. The cupbearer frowned at the salad made of various greens topped with boiled quail eggs, sliced strawberries and strips of roasted quail. _Meats, eggs, and greens—she could not allow this menu to stand._

The cupbearer poured the wealthy lord a cup of tea and set it on the table next to the salad. As she did, she sprinkled her bilious concoction over the food liberally. She could not be sure how much Biro would eat and she wanted to guarantee an effective dose. Her action was smooth and natural, another fine display of expert sleight of hand, but her effort was wasted as Lord Atius had his eyes shut as he reclined on the couch. The girl noted that the vial she used was nearly empty and she would need to steal into the kitchen later to create a fresh supply of Cat Gut.

"My lord, your tea," the girl announced, causing Biro to stir. His eyes fluttered open and he looked at the girl before him, her wispy gown settled against her curves in an alluring way, and he licked his lips. The Cat groaned inwardly even as Mattine blushed under her master's appraising gaze.

"I may have no more need of your tea now," the wealthy man informed his cupbearer. "The healer informs me that if I merely avoid wine for awhile, my illness will resolve itself. Still, since you have made this especially for me, I will drink some of it."

The girl smiled prettily at her master, signally her pleasure at his chivalrous consideration of her feelings.

"He also informs me that all the foods I thought were to blame for my condition are not, in fact, the cause of it and that in avoiding these foods, I have caused myself another problem; that of easy bleeding."

_Here, she must tread carefully._

"My lord, are you certain? I recall the last time you had eggs, you were quite... _indisposed_ and I would hate to see you in such pain again!"

"I'm flattered that you show me such concern, little one," the man replied with obvious approval in his voice. "I know that since I have been ill, I have neglected you."

"What? Oh, _no,_ my lord! Do not think of it! I would rather you be hale and healthy and fully recovered than risking your well-being in some effort to... to... be attentive to me."

"I quite agree," Biro returned. "I would _much_ rather that _you_ be attentive to _me._ "

"I... I do try my very best, my lord," the girl stammered, blushing furiously while thinking, _disgusting old lecher. I hope you choke to death on one of those strawberries._

"Hmm," the man hummed slowly as if considering something. "What do you suppose you can do right now that might show me how attentive you can be?"

_Put out your eye with my little finger?_ the girl wondered to herself.

"I could... I could feed you," Mattine offered, smiling at her master.

"Ah, yes, I think I would like that," Lord Atius agreed, sitting up and reaching for his tea cup. He took several swallows but he did not appear to need the alleged soothing properties of the tea at all. He seemed rather _himself_ just at the moment; that is to say, he seemed an awful and loathsome old goat. It had been too long since breakfast, when the Cat had last dosed her master with her mild poison, and the effects had essentially worn off. Well, he was about to find that they had returned. _With a vengeance._

The girl dropped to her knees before Biro and tried not to gag at the way his eyes lit up as he surveyed her in that position. She turned to the table and picked a strawberry off the top of the pile of contentious foods, then turned back around to offer it to her master. He bit into the strawberry, taking half of the red flesh into his mouth and chewing slowly as he watched Mattine's arm frozen in front of him, her hand poised just beyond his lips, offering him the remainder of the fruit. After he swallowed, he leaned his head down and took the other half of the strawberry into his mouth, licking her fingers as he did. She made herself giggle and turn away from him in what appeared to be shy embarrassment as she steeled herself for more of his repugnant behavior. Next, she held up a small boiled egg and fed that to him, bite by bite. They continued on in this way until the man had eaten his fill of the plate; _more than half,_ the girl noted with satisfaction. _This should be sufficient to convince him that the healer doesn't know what he is talking about._ He had not taken any more sips of the tea, certain as he was that he would no longer need it, and for that, she was glad. The Cat did not want any confusion about which was the cause of his soon-to-be-apparent distress. She only needed to stall him long enough for the Cat Gut to take effect.

"My lord, shall I clear this table and fetch you some water?"

"I'd prefer wine," Biro replied, "but water will have to do. Leave the platter. You can remove it later."

The cupbearer rose from her position on the floor before the wealthy lord, conscious of how his eyes seared her flesh even through the gown. She made her movements slow and graceful as she drifted toward the corner of the room where a pitcher of water and a few cups sat on a small table. The girl poured for him, adding two slices of lemon to flavor Lord Atius' drink and then spun around to bring the cup to the dead man. The girl was surprised to see him sitting upright in his seat, eyes narrowed as a smile appeared on his face, slowly growing into a grin as he watched her. She misliked the look greatly.

"Come here," the man commanded.

_What a bloody nuisance,_ the Cat growled inwardly as she walked toward Biro, cup in hand.

Just as she reached him, there was a knock at the solar door and then without awaiting permission to enter, the visitor pushed through. _It was Lady Vorena._

"Atius, why did you not send for me directly once the healer had left?" she demanded of her flustered husband. She had caught him off his guard but the Cat could see the frustrated rage that existed along with the agitation.

"My dear, he left only just moments ago."

_Liar._

"Well, never mind that. What did he say?" Vorena wanted to know. As she asked, she gave her typical disapproving look to her husband's servant and then told the girl that she was dismissed for now and would be expected for supper. If the wealthy man intended to countermand his wife's orders, he was not given the chance as the lady began to rapidly pepper her husband with questions about the visit of the healer. Vorena was saying something about the importance of Atius being well before the feast as the cupbearer left the room.

The Cat was through the door into the passageway as quickly as was seemly and as she pulled the door closed behind her, she found the Faceless sellsword casually leaned up against the wall of the corridor. His eyes traveled from the girl's head to her toes as he inspected her almost indifferently.

"You appear well," he remarked.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

He shrugged, turning from her to walk down the passage, saying in bored tones, "You were with Lord Atius for quite some time."

"I had to _feed_ him," the girl told the master as she increased the pace of her steps to catch up to him. The memory of Biro's mouth on her fingers, licking and sucking as she offered him bite after bite, filled her with the sudden desire to pour boiling wine over her hands.

"Oh? How delightful that must have been. I'm sorry to have interrupted."

"You?" the girl sniffed skeptically. "It was Lady Vorena who interrupted."

"Who do you think told Lady Vorena that the healer had left and where she could find her husband?"

"But... why?"

" _That_ is also the right question," the handsome man told her in a low voice, his characteristic smirk on full display. "Do not forget our appointment tonight, little wolf."

"When have I ever?"

"I just wanted to be sure you hadn't made other plans, like sneaking into your master's bedchamber."

Mattine felt the heat creeping up her neck and quickly changed the subject.

"I didn't need your help, you know. I can handle Biro."

"Oh, undoubtedly. If all else failed, you could lull him to sleep with a lesson on the intelligence required for swordplay," the master suggested.

"I only needed ten more minutes," the Cat told him, ignoring the jab. "He will be quite unable to harass me or anyone else in ten more minutes."

"I wonder if you have the faintest idea of what can happen to you in ten minutes," the handsome man mused, deigning to look down at the girl's face.

She felt the heat creep higher but met his eyes and said, once again, that she could handle the wealthy man and she didn't need anyone's intervention in her affairs.

"Ten minutes is no time at all," the Cat added. Before she could think to say more, she felt the handsome man's arms encircle her, squeezing the breath out of her, and then she was lifted and pushed into an alcove. _A recessed doorway_ , she registered. She opened her mouth to demand to know what he thought he was _doing,_ but was unable to utter a single word beneath the crush of his false lips. When the girl realized what was happening, her eyes flew wide open and she struggled in earnest, but was unable to move beneath the weight of the Faceless sellsword's body pressing hard against hers. Her mind was quickly flipping through reasonable responses to this sudden aggression when it froze. The master had pulled one of his arms from behind her and was using that hand to grasp the thin layers of material that comprised her skirt, pulling them higher and higher. Her one arm now freed, the girl's hand instinctively flew to the guard's face, latching onto an earlier idea and meaning to put the master's eye out with her little finger. The master deftly avoided her jabbing fingers and quickly slammed her hand against to the door but he had to drop her skirt to do it. The girl felt a small sense of triumph and may have even allowed the word _impasse_ to flutter through her mind when she was swiftly flipped around, her cheek and breast pressed firmly into the door as the master grasped both of her wrists in one hand, pulling them up behind her back.

_Just like Jaqen in Meerios' alley,_ she thought before she realized that her mouth was no longer covered.

"Let go of me!" the acolyte hissed but as she tried to pull herself to the side to escape the Faceless Man, her arms were wrenched more painfully upward and she drew in a great gasp. She stopped fighting as thoughts of _stillness_ competed with thoughts of stabbing him through his heart with her dagger and the piercing pain she felt in her arms. _Think!_ she commanded herself. _You survived the lords of the canal. This smirking guard cannot best you!_

But he did.

The girl's skirt was bunched around her waist and she could feel the cloth of the guard's breeches against her bare thighs as his hand grasped her hip over her smallclothes. He held her there like that for a few seconds and then leaned down to whisper in her ear.

"Two and a half minutes, little wolf. I have over seven to spare. What do you suppose I could do with seven more minutes?"

When she realized that he had dropped her skirt back into place and released her arms, her mouth pinched in anger. She was, of course, angry at the handsome man for humiliating her, but she was angrier with herself for allowing her weaknesses to be unmasked so easily; indeed, for _being_ weak. Her daggers had always comforted her and here, the master had shown her he could render them useless simply by pinning her wrists. Her new trick of Asshai also required at least one hand, the use of which he had just easily deprived her.

Drawing in a deep breath and forbidding herself to allow her voice to shake, the Cat asked the handsome man if there was a counter to this attack.

"Certainly," he replied mildly, "the easiest there is."

"Well?"

"Don't allow yourself to be pinned in the first place."

* * *

The manse was buzzing with the news that despite following the healer's instructions precisely, Lord Atius had again experienced an episode of belly pain, and this one so severe that by the time it had subsided, he was left so spent he could not leave his chambers. Mattine made him another pot of tea and he barely acknowledged her when she left it at his bedside. He looked quite pale and his eyes were sunken. She was tempted to hold the cup to his lips, but recalling his earlier behavior, she decided against it. When she returned to the kitchen, she reported to the cook that their master did not wish to see an egg, a strawberry, or any greens for as long as he lived.

With no lord to serve, supper passed quickly and the girl found that she was eager to meet a certain Faceless Man in the grove that night. She had dreams of exacting revenge with her slender _Bravos_ blade. _A broken nose would almost make up for his stupid trick in the corridor._ The logical part of her mind knew that the master had taught her another valuable lesson, but her wounded pride was preventing her from taking the lesson and moving on just yet. Every time she thought of the incident (which had been _many, many_ times since the handsome man had left her in the alcove), the sense of helplessness she recalled feeling just made her angrier. By the time midnight arrived, her rage existed as a near-palpable reverberation moving through her, driving her vindictiveness. When the time came, she fairly _stormed_ into the grove, blazing with purpose.

The handsome man was there, leaning carelessly against a tree, watching her with amusement.

"Come to teach an old man a lesson, have you?" he asked as soon as she was within earshot.

She said nothing but then noted the absence of weapons.

"I thought we were to spar blindfolded?"

"After your... _problems_ in the corridor, I thought it best that I teach you a few close-combat lessons."

"I thought you said the only counter was to not get pinned?"

"Yes, but you were not truly pinned until you allowed me to turn you around..."

" _Allowed you_?" she spat in disbelief.

"Yes, little wolf. _Allowed_."

Her look was a mixture of incredulity and rancor.

"Why did you not bite my lip when I kissed you?" he wanted to know.

"Was that a kiss?" she seethed. "It felt more like an assault."

"Well, it was that, too, but it might have stopped if you had bitten me."

" _I know,_ " she huffed.

"You could have blackened my eye if you had butted me with your head," he continued.

"I _know!_ "

"Before I had even pushed you against the door, you might have used your knee, either to the belly or to the groin. I might have dropped you if the blow was sharp enough."

" _I KNOW!"_

And in truth, she did know. The Cat had relived every second of the _lesson_ so many times that evening, she had already picked out every mistake and berated herself a thousand times for every missed opportunity. To hear the master point each failure out to her now was grating on her most sharply.

"Hmm. Should we put all you _know_ to the test?" the Faceless sellsword inquired.

"You want me to bite your lip and blacken your eye?"

"Only if you can," he smirked.

She thought of smashing his nose with the top of her skull and her malicious little smile returned.

"Alright," she agreed, bowing slightly to the handsome man. "Let's dance."

They grappled and sparred, fought and tangled, on and on. The Cat was glad she had pilfered a tunic from the laundry room as her master's favorite blouse would surely have been ruined with all their tumbling through the grass and dirt. The girl did not manage to break the handsome man's false nose, but she did land a solid punch along his jaw and found the contact was very satisfying. At the last, as he bent over her exhausted form laid out on the ground and offered her a hand up, the girl was unable to resist one final shot. _Quick as a snake,_ she reached up and grasped the neck of the Faceless Man's shirt and yanked him down by it. She felt the linen give, heard the faint _rip,_ but did not spare a thought for guilt and instead, as he crashed down on top of her, rolled the surprised man on his back. She produced a small knife from _somewhere_ (he made half-hearted noises about how they were sparring _without_ weapons tonight) and held it to his neck.

"Yield," she suggested sweetly, straddling his belly.

"I gladly yield," he sighed, bending his arms and bringing his hands to rest under his head as if he had meant to achieve just that position so that he might admire the stars through the leaves of the wealthy man's trees. "You have proven most formidable, little wolf. Necklines _everywhere_ will tremble at your very name."

"Sorry about that," she apologized in a completely insincere voice. The moon was bright and she could make out the damage she had done to his shirt very well. It was beyond repair.

"I would say you owe me a blouse, but I suppose you'd try to make me wear that one you're always clad in and then I'd not only _sound_ like your master, but I'd look like him too."

She knew she really should get off of the man, but she could not resist tweaking him just a bit more.

"There are worse things," she assured him dryly. "For instance, walking around in _these_ tatters." As she spoke, she fiddled with the hanging pieces of cloth that had once covered the handsome man's shoulder and upper chest. As she did, she noted a healing wound of his flesh; a linear cut, perhaps an inch long but with even, smooth edges, located just below his shoulder, in the fleshy part of his arm. _A knife wound,_ she knew instinctively. She could not say for sure by the light of the moon, but she imagined the fresh scar to be red. She ran her finger along it, asking how he had come by it.

The master's expression was bland but for a moment, she thought that perhaps there was something in his eyes; almost a look of... _alarm?_ But as bright as the moonlight was, it was still too dim to be sure and then the look was gone. He gave her some flippant reply or another, something about receiving the wound as a consequence of carelessness and _that should be a lesson to her_ but she was left with a cold feeling in her gut as she stood up and allowed him to get to his feet as well. There was a shift in the mood which they both sensed and the master watched the acolyte intently as she walked away from him, bound for her chamber. Her creeping doubts made her steps heavy and as she entered the manse, her mind had accepted the evidence she had been presented and she felt certain of one thing.

_Jaqen was right and she was wrong. The handsome man had been among those who had abducted her, and it was he who she had marked with her dagger._

* * *

_**Use Somebody-**_ Kings of Leon

_**With or Without You-**_ U2

_**Low-**_ Cracker

_**No Love-**_ Eminem (mostly because like the Cat in this chapter, Eminem is just so *angry* all the time. Why so cranky, Eminem?)


	44. Chapter 44

It was late. It had been full-dark for hours, but this was the time when she was most alert; most alive; fully _aware_. Higher and higher she climbed, padding easily over rocks and fallen branches, weaving around trees, and pushing through the cold wind. She climbed the lee side of the steep hill and so she was mostly protected from the steely bite of the icy gusts but even so, the chill was on her, digging into her flesh like frozen fingers, gripping her hard and uncomfortably, even through her dense coat. The moon was full but mostly hidden behind clouds, rendering a heavy blackness that enrobed her like a thick blanket. It did not hamper her, though, because her eyes were sharp and so she easily picked her way over the uneven ground.

As she moved, she experienced an indisputable _pulling_ toward the summit emanating from deep within her and it felt as if one and thirty hooks were embedded in her hide, attached to cords drawn ever tighter. Even if she had taken it into her head to resist that pull and instead sat on her haunches, refusing to take another step, she was certain that she would still move inexorably toward her destination. This was not a matter of will. _At least not her own will._ It was as if she could hear the holy call of one and thirty voices, beckoning her forward, whispering her name (her _names_ ) with ancient red mouths, both frowning and laughing; mouths amid faces that no longer existed. To ignore them was not possible, and so she climbed and climbed.

She broke the tree line and entered the circle with a low growl, walking slowly, warily, between two bleached stumps. She approached the fire that blazed bright in the center of the flat clearing, a space that was framed by the remains of nearly three dozen weirwood trees. Upon entering the circle, the chill night and abrasive wind seemed to release their grip on her and her skin warmed beneath her fur nearly instantly, as if by magic. The very air seemed to quiver about her with an almost visible pulsing. There was _power_ here and it passed through her and writhed around her and throbbed within her veins. She could _feel_ it in her bones, this mysterious power, and the wolf bristled and whined and then halted. She could feel it in her dreams, too, and the girl thrashed and sighed and then settled.

The flames waved and darted, at times springing high into the blackness as if reaching for the night sky, sending tiny, glowing embers drifting up toward the tree tops and the hidden stars in greeting or in tribute. As the fire moved and leapt in the air, she could see the large knight-who-was-no-knight ( _friend-who-was-no-friend_ , some part of her thought angrily, feeling hurt) and the shrunken woman on the other side, their faces lit up orange and yellow, flickering in and out of her sight with the upward meandering of the serpentine flames. She had sensed the pair, _smelled them_ , before she saw them, and so she knew they were there even before she had crested the hill, but the girl wanted to _see._ The girl was more dependent on her eyes than the wolf. Or, perhaps just less adept with her nose.

"Death has entered this place," the old woman said, her voice crackling more than the glowing logs which fed her fire. Contempt colored her words and they were not orange or yellow, for there was no warmth in them, but black and cold.

The boy had been sitting but now he stood; _the man,_ the girl corrected herself, _a boy no longer_. He was quite tall; had _grown_ so tall. She already knew that, because she had seen him before through Nymeria's eyes, but it had been days and days since her last wolf dream and whenever she thought of him during her waking hours, she remembered the boy from the King's Road and Harrenhal and the Brotherhood; the boy of six and ten who had not yet reached his full potential; the boy of over four years ago. She had trouble keeping this _man_ in her mind's eye. He did not fit there; was familiar but strange, too.

Gendry looked across the flames at the grey fur of the massive beast he had parted ways with at the inn. He did not seem surprised to see her there. Instead, he looked as if he might have been... _pleased._

"Hello, m'lady," he greeted with a courtly bow. "The wise witch of High Heart did not mention that _you_ would be arriving. She said another would be coming, but I _am_ glad to see you."

The tall knight seemed to give the crone a stern look then, his expression marred with accusation.

"You have heard only that which you wanted to hear, ser. It is the way of men. I told you this one would be here but you did not believe me," the shriveled woman chastised him with a shake of her bony finger. "Did I not say that you would soon see a terrible creature; an ender of lives?"

"You did," he admitted, "but I thought you spoke of another; the one you mentioned earlier when you tricked me into staying here with you. I wish your way of speaking was plainer."

" _Tricked?_ Bah! And my way of speaking is plain enough, if you have ears to hear," the woman shot back, and then addressed the wolf. "Is that not right, _assassin_? Have you come to pay me back for stealing a kiss from your love?"

"Assassin? It seems unfair to blame a wolf for doing what instinct tells it to do," Gendry replied to the old woman. "Especially a direwolf. And I've seen this _terrible creature_ use her teeth to defend the innocent, so the death _she_ brought _saved_ lives."

"Aye," the woman agreed. "A wolf kills by instinct, for the protection and survival of herself and her pack. But what of the girl who commands her? She may choose when to take life and when to spare it. She is not driven by instinct alone. Where the wolf is powerless to deny her nature, the girl may choose to defy or obey the darkness with herself."

The boy ( _man_ ) looked at the old woman in confusion. He was not accustomed to the way she spoke, to her peculiar beliefs, or to her special sensitivity to sorrow. The wizened woman's rough, crackling voice drifted over the stabbing wind and the fire seemed to bend as if there were real force behind her breath; as if each word was delivered as a great gust. The ghost circled the fire, drawing closer to Nymeria. She stopped a few feet away, staring into and _through_ the golden eyes of the direwolf. What the woman read in those eyes drew from her a wheezy burst of laughter.

"Shall I tell you of my dream, wolf-assassin?" the old witch began, her laughter dying. Her voice was a mordant, raspy sound now, but it cut through the wind and settled in the wolf's ears, heard and understood. "I'll tell you, though I want none of your kisses. I know who you came here to seek, and see? I have kept him here for you, though he wanted to leave to return to his brothers."

Again, Gendry's face asked a question but the ghost ignored it and continued addressing herself to the animal.

" _The wolf_ came here to find this one who walks like another; like a dark storm-lord, once great and powerful. The girl, though... oh, my, such _anger._ What could a stubborn boy have done to engender such enmity?"

"Who..." Gendry started, but the ghost ignored him and continued speaking to Nymeria; _through_ Nymeria.

"This one is greater than the other, dark heart. He is no lord, but he can bend steel to his will _and_ use that same hammer to steal the breath of men as well. The other could never create; only destroy. But you know that very well, don't you, little one?"

The wolf whined and the befuddled knight crossed his arms over his chest, frowning. It was plain to see that he did not like all these riddles, especially as they seemed to be about _him_ and he did not understand what they meant.

"You and he have an odd kinship, don't you, my lady? Born of a lordship over steel and a _history_. You ought not judge him too harshly, my girl, for when it comes to comparing who has committed the most repugnant horrors, his sins pale in comparison to yours."

Gendry growled his disapproval, both for the way the woman was upbraiding the wolf (ridiculous, he knew, for the wolf was more than capable of defending herself and the idea that Nymeria was remotely bothered by something a human was saying to her was _laughable_ ) and for the way she continued to speak in her strange, cryptic way, revealing just enough for him to know he was at least partly the subject of the ghost's monologue but not enough for him to truly understand what the old woman _meant_ by her words.

"Shall I tell you what else I have seen when I ought to have been lost to peaceful rest?" the stooped woman inquired, then continued without waiting for the wolf's response. "A silver prince and the dark lord of storms, raging at each other, locked in battle for a prize; a single winter rose. Do you think I speak of the past, child? Of thwarted lovers long dead? No! It is the future I see! Aye, _your_ future. But perhaps that is not the dream about which you wish to know. Perhaps you are seeking to solve the riddle of your own troubling dreams; dreams of heads burdened with crowns of ice and steel; dreams of a father who will not relieve you of your obligations to duty; dreams of a brother who wishes you to find the birthright his mother has left to him; dreams of how you will be surrounded by death as you discover that only you can restore the life of the realm."

The wolf whined and turned her immense head away so that she was gazing across the fire at the dark knight. The flames moved before her eyes, orange tongues turning and twisting, and in them she saw men and women; lords and ladies in all their finery, laughing and drinking; revelers, dancing. In their midst, a girl in a silver and grey dress spun and whirled. The ghost cackled and she sounded bitter as she continued.

"There are choices to be made, my lady; _terrible_ choices, and your decisions have not always been guided by wisdom, have they, dark heart? The stink of death is in your fur and in all your long hair and in every false curl and lock you have ever worn and yet _you_ have been chosen by the old gods," the wizened woman said, and then, squinting herself at the flames with those frightening red eyes, added, "the old gods, aye, and some others as well, it seems, my little wolf."

"You call Nymeria _little?_ " Gendry asked, incredulous, eying the hulking mass of the unnatural creature.

"I do not speak to the direwolf, but to her mistress."

The blacksmith-knight snickered, saying, "You must have great confidence in the power of your voice if you think it carries all the way across the Narrow Sea. The girl is in Braavos."

"Aye, she sleeps in Braavos now, but is a girl no longer," the ghost replied. "And it is not my voice that carries, but her ears that hear. Isn't that right, little wolf?" The tiny crone looked into the great glowing eyes of the beast before her. The golden orbs were shining in the firelight. Nymeria whined.

He did not understand her. _How could anyone hear from so far away?_ He doubted Arya could have heard their conversation if she had been standing outside of the circle of weirwood stumps, so softly were they speaking (the night and the _place_ seemed to demand their quiet) and so loud was the howling of the wind around them. _Gods, but it was cold._

The woman turned from the wolf to face Gendry across the flames, saying, "Will you not kiss her? This girl whose lips you favor?"

He narrowed his blue eyes in anger. He did not like this jape and would not stand for this old woman's teasing.

"I don't know what you're playing at, but I'll thank you to stop."

"Oh, dear boy, I only seek to soothe your aching heart. Your heart _does_ ache for her, does it not? And yet you will not kiss her? It does not seem rational."

" _She is not here!_ " Gendry roared terribly, at the end of his patience. He had been so long afraid that Arya had met her end that when that strange assassin had assured Lady Stoneheart that her youngest daughter lived still and word had finally drifted back to him of the exchange, he knew a relief then that he could barely contain. He had wanted to _weep._ But since that time, the thought of her alive and _so far away,_ in a foreign land where he could not see her, could not speak to her, could not reach out to her and explain... That thought had gnawed at him. She was alive, and though he fought it, he could not help but have hope that he might someday see her again. But that hope was cruel and it ate away at him until he could not bear to think of her because of the pain those thoughts produced in him, deep inside. And so when the ghost exhorted him to... to _kiss_ her, the roar had welled up within him and raged forth, and he could never have hoped to contain it if he tried. The sound was so loud that it disturbed the peace of the place and startled even the wolf, so much so that she rose to her feet with an abbreviated yelp.

The knight rubbed his hand across his mouth in an attempt to soothe himself. After a moment, he repeated his assertion, only this time, he said it quietly. Calmly. And with a certain sadness coloring his voice.

"She is not here."

"And I tell you that she _is_ ," the ghost countered, "only you are too blind to see."

_What was he to say to that?_

Gendry made his way around the fire, following the old woman's earlier footsteps and then passed the ghost as he approached the direwolf. In truth, the large beast still made him a little uneasy. _How could she not, when she could remove his head with one great snap of her jaws?_ But he felt a kinship with this animal all the same, one that he was hard pressed to explain fully, even to himself. But there it was, and some part of him thought that maybe it was because they had both lost; and not just lost, but lost the _same thing_ ; lost _her._

The knight drew close to the beast and slowly placed his hand on her great head, his tentative movements seeking her permission. He rubbed at the fur between her ears and then curled his fingers in the softness he found there. The deep blue of his eyes was rendered nearly black by the shadows created by the undulating fire but his eyes seemed warm nonetheless as they pierced the golden irises of the wolf. He looked down at her, so tall was he that even at her great height, man and beast did not stand eye to eye. Gendry's brow furrowed deeply, giving him a look of concentration as he stared into the depths of Nymeria's eyes.

"What do you think, m'lady?" he whispered to the wolf, a laugh waiting on his lips. "This witch says that my Lady of Stark is coming home. She says that I shall see your mistress again. Does that sound like reason to you? Can you fathom such a thing?"

"You'll more than see her, boy," the crone hissed angrily. "Are you so bold as to doubt me? To doubt me is to doubt the power of the old gods. Here, in this place, that is a dangerous thing."

Gendry did not acknowledge the woods witch but kept his blazing eyes on Nymeria, his hand resting upon her head, stroking her gently.

"You see?" the knight said to the wolf. "You heard her. I'll _more_ than see her, she says. You should stick with me, sweet lady, if you want to see her, too."

His words were straightforward but his tone gave indication of his doubt. He thought the old woman mad, it was plain to hear.

"Your Lord Beric never doubted that which he heard from me," the woman sniffed. "If you think yourself so superior in judgment, why then did you stay when you could have left with your band?"

_Why_ did _he stay? She had said he would see Arya. He knew it was a lie. He did not believe her yet he could not leave. Anguy had laughed and told him to come on but Harwin had looked thoughtful and then said that he should wait. If Arya Stark were to appear here, as the ghost had said, then someone would need to bring her to her mother._

_"You were her friend," Harwin had told him. "Might be that she would feel more comfortable with you."_

_Gendry had not told the Northman that the Arya he knew, the one who had bolted from him and gotten herself snatched up by the Hound, would be more likely to run him through with Needle than agree to accompany him anywhere. But he stayed anyway, because he did not have a choice. He had to see... And though he had not seen Arya, he had met Nymeria once again. Perhaps in the twisted logic of this old witch, his meeting the wolf somehow qualified as a prophecy coming true, but no matter. A direwolf was a fearsome creature and a direwolf whose loyalty could be counted upon made a fearsome ally. Perhaps he had not seen Arya, but he had still gained in this bargain._

As if she had read his mind, the witch cackled but the sound was mirthless.

"You _still_ do not see, stupid boy! It is no wonder your brothers call you the Bull. You are strong and fierce like a bull, aye, and just as witless, with a skull just as thick. _This is the girl whose lips you favor._ I cannot say it _plainer._ "

The knight laughed again, and the sound seemed a little sad somehow, but he was smiling as he addressed the wolf once more.

"What say you, m'lady? Are you _her_? Shall I kiss you now and find out?"

* * *

Arya jerked awake, finding herself fully clothed in her stolen, dirty tunic and breeches, lying atop her covers. _When had she fallen asleep?_ She had merely sat down on her mattress to think on the latest of the many problems which plagued her, _the handsome man._ She never meant to fall asleep; there was too much to sort out! In the wake of seeing that knife wound on the Faceless master's shoulder, _the knife wound she had given him_ , the apprentice had been furiously trying to make a plan for dealing with the problems this circumstance created for her. _He was her new master, but he tried to kill her. They were isolated under the same roof together and he was deceptive and possibly had ill intentions. Her final trial was fast approaching and the person she must rely on to train her could not be trusted. She had a task to do in the manse and could not be sure that the handsome assassin's purpose here was not to thwart her. Or, what if there was to be a pair of deaths? What if the order meant for her to finish Biro, and then for the handsome man to finish_ her?

Perhaps she had lain Mattine's head on her pillow after a time, so taxing was considering all of these new possibilities, on top of all that troubled her already: her task in the manse, her trial, the Kindly Man's new edict, the canal plot, the question of her wearing _this_ face in Olive's presence, the troublesome way the Bear was attached to Olive when his own trial was so near, her brother Jon, her resurrected mother, her feelings for Jaqen... She had not _intended_ to sleep; if she had, she would have said her prayer, but she did not. And now, when she ought to have been solving the problem of what to do about the Faceless sellsword, she was instead ruminating about _Gendry._

_Shall I kiss you now..._

As the girl remembered the words, she felt a fury building inside of her. And then she felt almost sheepish, reminding herself that it was just a _dream._ And then she remembered that it was a _wolf_ dream, which might be no dream at all, and was angry all over again. _Kiss her? How dare he!_

Her reaction gave her pause. When she thought of her anger at him for leaving her ( _abandoning her_ ), she had to admit to herself that Jaqen had left her, too. Gendry, at least, had thought he was leaving her in the hands of noble men. Jaqen had no such illusions, leaving her as he had in Harrenhal. Why, then, was she so angry at Gendry but never had been at Jaqen?

_It was completely different,_ she told herself.

_It was,_ her little voice agreed, perhaps for the first time ever.

Jaqen had offered to take her with him; had even seemed to _want_ her to leave with him. He gave her a _choice._ When she made that choice (when she chose _wrong_ ), he still did not abandon her to chance but gave her his coin, his iron promise; a gift she could not understand at the time but with which she had purchased her own salvation. The Lorathi had always intended to see her again (had _prayed fervently_ to see her again, though this she did not know. _Arya Stark. Bring her to me_ ). He _wanted_ her but had respected her judgment and allowed her to follow her own conscience (though she could not know how hard this was for him. _Arya Stark, Arya Stark, Arya Stark,_ a man beseeched his god for his favor night after night). Gendry, though... In their parting, the choice was all _his_ and he would not be swayed by her. Her little heart, pitiful, damaged thing that it was, had called out to him, and he had ignored that call. He chose to leave her, never intending to see her again (though she could not know how sharply he had regretted it since. _Forgive me, m'lady. Forgive me, forgive me_ ). His choice, his _leaving_ , was the worst betrayal a girl who had lost much and seen more could fathom: abandonment. She had rescued him from the clutches of men who would use him, had not allowed him to accept a life of servitude without will, had not left him in Harrenhal when she might have, and had led him straight to the men he would choose over her. He had repaid her loyalty with indifference. The wound was deep; it had not healed. Perhaps it never would.

_Stop wasting your time thinking about things that do not matter,_ she told herself sternly, _and figure out what you are going to do about the handsome man._

_You could tell Jaqen and let him handle it for you,_ her little voice suggested, and just like that, their accord was over.

_I will not run to my master and beg him to solve my problems for me like a little girl,_ she seethed, angry at the very thought of it. She did not wish for Jaqen to think her incapable of... _anything._ She believed that her master was beginning to allow himself to think of her as more than a child (perhaps she merely wished this to be true, though). She did not want to do anything to jeopardize her new air of maturity. Besides, the Kindly Man had told her to keep away from Jaqen. She had, of course, been less than obedient in the past with such requests, but there was something about the way the elder had couched this particular demand that caused her to hesitate at the thought of ignoring his edict. _Disobedience has consequences. For all involved._ She could not be responsible for anything untoward happening to her master. So, for pride and for fear, she would have to solve this problem on her own.

But mightn't she use this knowledge of the handsome man's involvement in the plot against her to her own advantage? A participant in the abduction was within her grasp. She could introduce the subject and then probe his mind for his thoughts surrounding it. She could try to trip him up and see what he might reveal. _She could just ask him outright about his purpose in tossing her into the water._ Or maybe she could get him on his back again and prick him with her small dagger. She had done it easily enough when they had fought earlier. He might have pinned her in the hallway (she frowned at the memory. She should not have allowed him to get the better of her), but _she_ had pinned _him_ with her blade in the grove. She thought back on their earlier exchange and his words came to her unbidden.

_...you were not truly pinned until you allowed me to turn you around._

_Allowed?_

She had a disturbing thought then.

_Had he allowed her to pin him?_

Suddenly, she doubted herself. If she had need of his fear, if she had reason to extract his secrets at the point of her blade, could she really do it? Or did she have a false sense of her own skill? Had he merely _allowed_ her to pull him down by his blouse and pin his body beneath her or had he been truly caught off his guard? Damn the man! Damn _all_ the Faceless Men and their tricky tongues! Every word they uttered could be taken this way or that; every phrase was possible double-speak; every look a potential lie. The handsome man had been at her mercy in the grove, but had he put himself there on purpose or had she really bested him at the end?

_Ugh!_

She could not allow this master's smirking sarcasm to unnerve her. She could obtain the information from him by force, if need be. _She could._

_I still find it much easier to learn a man's secrets by holding a blade to his throat than by charming him,_ she had told Jaqen after their first duel in months and months.

_But the technique of charming men out of their secrets does have its place,_ her little voice reminded her. _And with the other way, there is sure to be blood. Such a mess. And so hard to wash out of the clothes..._

_You really do sound like Jaqen,_ she chided, but a smile had begun to form on her lips as she thought that perhaps she was close to solving this problem on her own. She rose from the bed, kicked off her boots and then stripped her dirty clothes from her body. She had a clean rag (a rag with an oddly familiar texture and brown in color) and a basin of water and so she wiped herself down and then got back into her bed, this time snuggling under her sheet, feeling cool and clean. There was much to be done and she would need her sleep if she expected to do it all.

* * *

Staring at his ceiling was doing nothing to improve his mood, but Jaqen continued to do it anyway. His candle had burned low and yet still, sleep had not found him. In every corner and recess of his mind, there was something to disturb him, some unknown that demanded consideration, and so he found no solace in his own thoughts. In every shadow, he saw a plot to worry him, and so he found no comfort in the things he could see with his eyes. In the very wind, he heard _her voice_ , and found that it unearthed all of the images of her he had tucked away to keep: a fierce girl with perfect form, glowing from her exertion, in a crouch with one leg extended for balance as she held her arms in line with her shoulders, each hand gripping a blade; a woman grown, her head tilted _just so_ , reclining on a bench and looking up at him through her thick lashes as her braid trailed over one shoulder, completely unaware of her own magnificence; an assassin seeking answers, her lithe body pressed beneath him, her head lifting from his mattress as her lips sought the freshly scarred flesh of his neck; a veiled widow, emboldened by wine and playing at seduction, unpracticed efforts so ridiculous and yet so charming in their innocence, not realizing that only a knock at the door had saved her from his kiss.

The Lorathi assassin groaned audibly, closing his eyes and scrubbing at his unshaven face with his hands. His memories of her were now a torment because they could not respond to him the way _she_ did (typically with a disrespectful look or a flippant remark, but sometimes with a poignant revelation about herself or a small expression of fear that could he soothe for her and even, on occasion, with a touch that seared his flesh, an invisible brand that marked him as _hers_ ). The images of her in his head could not be touched or held or... He frowned at himself. Why was he allowing his thoughts to move this way? He needed to put these memories back into their neat little box and take them out to inspect them _later_. There were problems that needed his attention, and he must think on _those,_ not on recent discoveries of the things he wanted from this one lovely girl. His focus was a thing of _legend_ among the Faceless Men and yet here, it was failing him.

Miserably.

He was meant to be unraveling this _canal plot._ He had vowed to solve the puzzle of her false face. He was resolved to make the temple safe once again for his apprentice. But all of his efforts were _stymied._ The rat-faced Westerosi had told him all he knew, which turned out to be very little (Jaqen's lips turned slightly upward in his own version of his lovely girl's malicious smile. The boy had thought to resist him, not believing that Jaqen would dare to go to the lengths he threatened. The boy had failed to realize that when it came to his lovely girl, there was no length the Lorathi would consider _too far_ and that he was not in the habit of issuing empty threats). Jaqen had learned that the Westerosi boy had participated for a certainty, but the acolyte said that all the others wore false faces, so he could not be assured of their identities. The Rat was given to understand that _the Stark bitch_ had angered the council one time too many and it was their decree that she be taken care of so that she might not return to cause more strife within the order. The boy had assumed the principal elder's involvement was a given, since he was told that the directive came from the council.

Jaqen knew this part about the council to be a lie, but the boy could have no way of knowing and so he had accepted it as truth. The boy then had even dared to make some off-hand comment that he himself assumed it was her relationship with her master that was the final straw. The Westerosi had long labored under the assumption that the Cat bought special treatment for herself by sharing her master's bed.

_No, little Rat,_ the assassin thought, sighing in the low light of his chamber, shifting in his bed as he did. _I can assure you that the girl does not share a man's bed_.

Jaqen remembered his hand on the acolyte's skinny throat, looking into the boy's eyes as he demanded to know who had directed the plot.

_Whose orders?_

_If you don't already know the answer, then you're not so clever after all._

He did already know, but deducing something because it made sense and having proof of a thing were often different, and so it was with this case. And without proof, he was essentially powerless to intervene. Jaqen knew his master must have designed this plot early on (he had felt the truth of it even as the girl still shivered in her damp shift), though the _why_ of it still eluded him. There were only two men within the order who had the power to orchestrate such an attack against this girl, and as he knew that _he_ had not planned the deed, that only left the principal elder. What he was struggling with, aside from the lack of verifiable proof of the thing (which the Rat was unable to provide, not having seen the kindly visage of the elder during the escapade), was the seeming contradiction of his old mentor and friend having masterminded a deadly plot against his purported _favorite_ acolyte. His sister had told him that the elder valued the girl above all the others and he knew it must be true based on his master's inaction when it came time to punish the girl for all of her many transgressions. The _Kindly Man_ was like a doting father who could not see when his most beloved child had erred. Jaqen wondered for a moment if he ought to be jealous. His master had always had a certain _fondness_ for him, it was true, but he had never been so lenient with the Lorathi, not even when he was a tender boy of five or six. The elder had never indulged Jaqen the way he indulged the Cat. His nature was not that of an indulgent man, so why then did he treat the girl with such deference?

Jaqen had a sudden suspicion, then. When he had returned home to find Arya Stark training among the young acolytes ( _Thank you,_ he had thought as he lit a candle and left it on the lip of the pool in the main temple chamber. _Thank you_ ), he also found that his old master had adopted a new countenance. Gone was the familiar face that Jaqen had known since his boyhood (certainly, his master had worn a thousand other faces over the years, but within the temple walls, he always returned to his _first_ face, the one that greeted an orphaned Lorathi boy when he entered the temple for the first time) and replacing it was the face of a doting grandfather with soft, snow-white hair and twinkling eyes. It was a look that was so incongruous with the calculating, dispassionate killer that Jaqen had admired for years that it took the younger assassin longer than it should have to adjust. At the time, the Lorathi had wondered at the choice but had never hit upon the answer. _Now_ , though... Was the existence of the _Kindly Man_ all a ploy to ensnare one girl, put her at her ease, and bring her into the fold? After the life she had lived, after seeing her father killed in front of her by her enemies, after the Mountain and the Tickler and the Hound and all the horror they represented, would a man with an easy smile and a kindly face be all that it took to reassure her?

His clever Cat would not have sold herself so cheaply, Jaqen knew, nor trusted so easily, but a little, broken girl of one- or two-and ten, clever though she was, might have only felt the relief that a friendly face at the end of a long journey could bring. Jaqen had tempted her with his coin. His master, it seemed, had tempted her with the sort of lie that only kindly face could tell: _you will be safe with me._

_But she wasn't safe._

And just like that, he was mulling over the same problem that he had tossed around as he walked from Biro's manse to the temple in the early morning hours. He had duties which needed tending to, yet all he cared for just then was solving his lovely girl's problems. _Because hadn't they become his problems?_

He had sought an assignment for his apprentice to remove her from the danger that she faced within the walls of the temple. Instead of keeping her safe, though, he had allowed her to become confined behind _other_ walls with his brother, a man whose own apprentice implicated him indirectly in the plot to kill the girl (though Jaqen's brother had not shown his _handsome face_ during the abduction, he was still suspected because he had recruited the Rat for the task). Now that the girl was essentially alone with one of her likely attackers in the manse on the far end of the city, what was to stop him, a fully inducted Faceless Man, from making another attempt on her life? _What had stopped him to this point?_ The principal elder claimed the master had been sent to protect her from dangers she might face within Biro's household. Did that include threats arising from within the order itself?

What danger within a wealthy man's household was greater than the danger posed by the very man sent there to prevent it?

_Oh, lovely girl, lovely girl..._

Jaqen closed his eyes and once again beseeched his god for his favor, begging in his familiar way to keep this _one thing_ for himself, but even as he did, the avalanche of concerns he had surrounding his apprentice threatened to overwhelm him.

As Jaqen lay sleepless in his bed, he could not know that across Braavos, his lovely girl was once again lost to her dreams even while he contemplated his own waking nightmares.

* * *

_How strange,_ the girl thought as faint strains of music drifted over the cold air and filled her ears. _Who is playing that harp?_

Though nearly completely encased in her gown of ice, Arya was able to lean just far enough forward to touch her aunt's sepulcher. She placed her palm against Lyanna's frosted tomb and found that the faint strains of music seemed to emerge from behind the stone. She could feel the vibrations.

_Music? In the crypts?_

The sound swelled and ricocheted off the walls and floor and ceiling. It was _everywhere_ and soon, she could feel it through the thin soles of her slippers, shaking her and surging through her feet and her legs. After a moment, the buzzing rose to her chest, wrapping itself around her heart and quickening her pulse. The song was so melancholy, so _beautiful_ , that she wanted to cry, but found she could not. Her unshed tears were frozen inside of her just as the tears she had wept previously had frozen like diamonds on her lashes and cheeks.

As she bent herself to touch the tomb and marveled at the resonance of the music, she felt herself slowly encircled by strong arms. Arya warmed slightly at the touch of them and the music grew and grew until it was almost a living thing, breathing through the whole of the crypts, shaking the bones that rested in each tomb. Ghost was there with her, as ever, sitting at her side and staring at the tomb upon which the girl was resting her palm. The silent wolf did not react to the arms that then held her or to those arms pulling her away from his side. _Who had her?_ the girl was left to wonder. Had her father left his solemn perch to hold her to him once more, or was this the embrace of some other restless spirit of the crypt?

_Cloves,_ the girl thought, noting that her hem was suddenly free of the ground to which it had only just been frozen. _Cloves and ginger, leather and lemons. All that is good._ She turned to see Jaqen behind her, his arms surrounding her waist, and she gasped in surprise. He kissed her eyelids, melting her frozen tears with his warm breath and lips. The music was louder and fuller now, as if a score of musicians were playing their instruments, and then her master began to move and her with him. They were dancing, twirling, Arya's frosted skirts and sleeves raining snow on the ground as the Lorathi spun her round and round, warming and sparkling in the torchlight. The corridor was wide, then wider; widening until she could no longer spy the tombs that lined it and then she saw that was because she was no longer in the crypts, but in the great hall of Winterfell, with music and light and laughter all around her.

Jaqen held her close in his arms, lifting her slippered feet off of the floor and spinning her around in time to the music, his hands pressed firmly against the silvery snowflake overlay of her twinkling grey gown. He shifted his position, and then they were dancing properly, his one hand at the small of her back and the other holding onto her own cold hand, lending her his heat. Gone was the frozen steel crown with all her dark hair woven through it. Now, that hair swayed freely at her back, a tumble of shining waves pinned away from her face with polished silver pins that looked for all the world like stars shining on the velvety blanket of the night sky. Her long tresses flew behind her as her master, her love, whirled round and round with her held tightly to him. He looked down upon her face and smiled at her with all his perfect, white teeth but then his face changed. It was a false face, but it was still Jaqen. She felt him in the pressure of his hands and she knew him by his scent and she found him in the familiar heat of his bronze eyes, even as they changed to blue while she watched. Jaqen might wear a different face, but she would always know him.

Wouldn't she?

Her small doubt wrought a shiver from her and her shaking caused her master to draw her even closer to him. Her eyes barely peeked over his shoulder as they spun faster and faster. The faces of the people surrounding their dancing forms were a blur, yet all known to her somehow. Still, the speed and the twirling and the tight way the man held her in his arms all conspired to leave her weak and panting and she cried out for him to stop; _stop_ and set her down so that she might breathe; so that her head might stop swimming. He obliged her and they came to rest in a corner of the hall, away from the crowd and the lights and the noise.

"Perhaps your corset it too tight," the man commented, his blue eyes crinkled with amusement and his tone was suggestive. "Do you need assistance in loosening it? They are such _damnable contraptions."_

The words rang familiar though the man was a stranger in truth, as she had only recently made his acquaintance and had little to do with him since, until he asked her for this dance. His insolence was _breathtaking_. She raised her hand to slap his face but he caught her fingers and kissed them.

"Surely, on your nameday, you would find more pleasure in kissing than in fighting, my lady?" the infuriating Tyroshi asked her sweetly. He leaned in closer and whispered in her ear, "You look like a woman who was made for kissing."

"There is only one man whose kisses I desire," she whispered back so softly he nearly missed what she said. She sounded endlessly sad, but then her anger filled her again and she jerked her hand away from him, continuing acidly, "And in truth, I am more made for fighting, anyway."

"You admire me, sweet lady, do not deny it," he told her in what she would discover was his typically arrogant way. He reached out and brazenly wrapped one of her dark tresses around his finger.

"I am no lady, sweet or otherwise," Arya told him in icy tones, taking a step back from him and wincing as the movement pulled her hair, "and the only thing I admire about you is your fine steel. Perhaps someday soon, I shall take it for my own."

The roguish Tyroshi rested his hands on the unique hilts of his blades and told her, "You may have my weapons, fair lady. You have only to kill me first."

She smiled her malicious little smile and he devoured those lips and their awful twist with his eyes as she replied, "That is precisely what I had in mind, _ser_."

He laughed then, good and truly, at her words. It was obvious to her that he found her amusing but did not regard her as a threat. She planned to change his perception, but he would not have long to live with his new understanding if she had her way. _And she looked forward to swinging that fine arakh once she had claimed it._

When Mattine awoke, she found she was smiling but she could not for the life of her understand _why_. Her dream faded quickly into the mists and try as she might, she could not call it back up. She knew she had been in the crypts and then it seemed there was sweet music but beyond that, she could not recall anything. After a few minutes of concentrating to no avail, the girl shrugged and arose, dressing in her wispy gown and leaving her chamber, bound for the kitchen. She found she was very hungry, and she wanted to be sure to satisfy herself before undertaking her day's duties and her day's _plans._ She needed to get the wealthy man ready for the feast which was a mere three days away and she also needed to choreograph her careful dance with her very _handsome_ master.

* * *

Lord Atius' devoted cupbearer brought a breakfast of warm, crusty bread and nuts with a pot of tea to his bedside. He was quite weak from his attack the day before and did not have the strength to walk to the small hall. Mattine was under orders from Lady Vorena to pour fluids down his throat until his color improved. The girl was more than happy to oblige since the fluids she chose had a _certain property_ the girl would find most useful later. When she entered Biro's bedchamber, she was shocked at how awful he looked. _Shocked and delighted._ He was pale and his eyes were sunken. His lips were dry and cracked. There were fresh bruises visible on him. When he saw her, he moaned and her heart swelled with a sort of grim satisfaction.

"Oh, my poor Lord Atius!" the girl cried with convincing distress. "Have no worries, I am here to revive you. I shall bring you pot after pot of my tea and by the end of the day, you will be quite yourself again!"

The wealthy man was understandably reluctant to put _anything_ into his mouth, but after much tiresome cooing and cajoling, Mattine was able to get him to eat a few bites. He washed it down with small sips of tea and after ten minutes when he did not feel worse, she convinced him to eat and drink more. Though still weak and tired, he was significantly more cheerful as he ate the last of the nuts, realizing that his belly did not trouble him.

"This is the best I have felt in days and days, Mattine," he croaked out, sitting up against his pillows.

"Of course, my lord!" the girl smiled. "You did not eat eggs or greens or any of the things that upset your digestion." _And I did not poison you with Cat Gut._

The wealthy man grunted in response to her.

"I think later you might even be able to tolerate wine," the girl told him merrily.

"But the healer said wine was the cause..."

She boldly interrupted him, wagging her finger slightly like a nursemaid, "Now, Lord Atius, that healer said you were to eat all the things that caused you pain as well. If he was wrong about that, don't you think he might have been wrong about the wine?"

"Just the same, I think I'll wait on the wine," he replied. "Now, bring me more tea."

"Yes, my lord," she said in her charming way. "Here is the last cup. I shall brew you some more immediately."

And so her day went, feeding the man nuts and pouring his tea, talking to him in her tinkling voice as his strength slowly returned. By the evening, he told her he felt almost himself again and that he thought he _would_ try some wine after all. She gave him his cup, complete with some dilute Sweetsleep to ensure his newfound energy did not lead to his getting _other_ ideas about what she could do for him besides pour his wine, and soon, he was yawning and waving her away.

"More tea in the morning, my dear," he managed to call out before he began snoring.

_Oh, this is all going so splendidly,_ she thought to herself as she brought the dishes back to the kitchen.

The kitchen was still busy, even though the hour was growing late. There were so many preparations to undertake for the feast. The time was short now and what could be done ahead of time was being done. Extra help would be brought in on the actual day (one extra pot boy in particular would be there by special arrangement), but for now, the household staff worked long hours to make Lidia's sixteenth nameday a memorable one. The very idea made the Cat roll her eyes. _Parties and frivolities are meaningless and empty_ , she thought. _Betrothals even worse_. She hurriedly left the kitchen before she could be pressed into service there and made her way to her chamber. Things were far too busy in the manse for the Faceless sellsword to expect her for a lesson anytime soon, and she had not yet decided how she best to approach the man after her discovery of his complicity in the plot to harm her. It had all seemed so simple in the middle of the night—she would charm him, using her womanly wiles to tease the answers she sought from his lips. In the harsh light of day, her ability to do such a thing seemed less certain. She had failed, _more than once_ , to get what she wanted from Jaqen using just these skills.

_Skills, bah!_

Skills were not these soft deceptions! _Skills_ were learned through hard effort and study; long hours in the training room; through _pain_ and practice. Kisses and caresses and speaking with a honeyed tongue (and _licking_ with a honeyed tongue) were not _skills._

_But sometimes they were,_ her little voice reminded her. _Flirtation as a tactic, remember?_

She did remember.

_If you think it wise, master_ , she had said while reclining on the bed at the inn. The Cat had tried very hard to approximate a _seductive_ posture but was not sure she had achieved it until she saw Jaqen's subtle indication, his bronze eyes moving down her face and neck, appraising her form. After a moment, he had shaken his head and stood up straight. He had _retreated._

But what if the outcome had been different? What if her enticement had been read as invitation and accepted? In the inn, she was trying to beat her master at his own game, and she had a small success in that one instance, refusing to give him what he wanted (her _mortification_ ). But with the handsome man, she could not know what his response would be. How far was she willing to go in order to get what she wanted? And what if he was willing to go further than she was?

Until she had decided how to proceed, it would be best for her not to see the Faceless master. It was therefore a good time to pay a visit to her brother so that she might try to straighten him out about Olive.

Attired in her breeches and her master's blouse, her one small dagger hidden beneath the sleeve, the Faceless cupbearer slipped from the manse, using a window to drop into the garden (thus avoiding any questioning from the garden door guard, something she desired greatly, especially if that guard happened to be a certain _handsome_ master) and scaling the wall from there.

The Cat slipped quickly through the alleys and streets, arriving at the temple and scaling a wall for the second time that night. She stole through door that led past the kitchen, glad that the Faceless Men saw no reason to place guards at _their_ garden door. The girl found her way to the acolytes' corridor. She passed her own room and on a whim, ducked inside, exchanging her master's white blouse for her own quilted doublet. It would be more practical for sparring, should she find herself crossing blades once again with the Faceless sellsword. The apprentice left her master's shirt in a heap on the foot of her mattress and then swept silently from her cell, carefully closing the door and making her way to the room that the Bear and the Rat shared. She slipped her dagger into her palm, _just in case the Rat is awake and takes it into his head to finish what he started when he helped throw me to the eels_ , she reasoned.

The girl extinguished the torch nearest her brother's cell so that bright light would not flood the room when she opened the door, and then she quietly slipped into the chamber. In the dim light that did show from the passageway, the girl saw the bed nearest the door was empty, sheets and blankets folded at the end of the bare mattress. In the other, a hulking form lay snoring softly under a blanket. _The Bear._ He was lying on his side, facing the door, lost to deep sleep with his back pressed against the opposite wall. The Cat closed the door softly and then crept up to her brother's side. Not knowing what response he would have to being awakened unexpectedly in the dark (her own response to such a thing would have most assuredly been violent), she opted to incapacitate him first and then explain herself later.

Gingerly, the girl climbed into the Bear's bed, meaning to slip one arm beneath his neck and use her hand to cover his mouth while exerting gentle pressure on his windpipe with her other arm. Her plan, it seemed, was not very well thought out.

As soon as he felt her warm body sidle next to his, the boy moaned sleepily (the Cat was pretty sure he had said _Olive_ ) and wrapped both of his great arms around her thin frame, wrapping her up and dragging her to him in an almost suffocating hug. Before she could work out how to extract herself from her brother's embrace, he nuzzled her neck in his sleep and sighed. _It tickled_ and her giggle seemed to disturb the boy's sleep a little.

"Love you," the boy murmured softly, burying his face deeper between her shoulder and neck, tickling her again and eliciting another fit of giggling and shivering.

"Oh, this is ridiculous!" she declared, exasperated. "Let go of me!"

Her loud demand, rendered in a voice that was _not_ Olive's, startled the boy from his slumber and he reacted to his confusion and disorientation in a most appropriate manner.

It was the second time in recent memory that the girl had been literally tossed out of a man's bed.

The Cat groaned and muttered, "Nar 'amala." A taper resting on a table near her head flared to life and she could see the Bear's wide, surprised eyes staring down at her.

" _Cat?_ "

"Yes, idiot, it's me," the girl grumbled, picking herself up off of his floor.

" _What are you doing here?_ " the boy cried. "And how did you light that candle? Wait… Were you just… were you in my _bed_? Were you… did you… _kiss_ me?"

" _What_?" the girl yelped. "Of course not, stupid! I was just trying to wake you up!"

"Are you sure? Because it seemed like… I dreamed I was kissing Olive."

The girl rolled her eyes at her brother, sitting down on the edge of the Rat's abandoned bed.

"Where is _he_ ," she asked the Lyseni, jerking her head down to the bed upon which she sat.

"I haven't seen him for a few days. I assume he took his vows and was sent on a mission."

The girl considered that, wondering what mission the rat-faced boy was possibly qualified to carry out on his own. As she considered the prospects ( _glaring menacingly at people who made him jealous_ did not seem the sort of task the order would assign, though), the Bear sat up in his bed, the blanket falling away from his naked chest.

"Seven hells, do _none_ of the men in this temple sleep _clothed_?" the Cat groused.

Her brother snickered, saying he wasn't sure what the other men in the temple wore to sleep, as _he_ did not ever find himself in their beds when they were sleeping.

"Unlike _you_ ," he tacked on.

His sister glared at him and he laughed at her ire.

"Oh, come on Cat, you deserved it," he chuckled. "Waking me up like that."

" _You were crushing me!_ " she defended. " _And… and nuzzling my neck and telling me that you loved me_."

It was the Bear's turn to be embarrassed.

"I told you, I was dreaming about Olive."

"Well, that's why I'm here."

The large acolyte gave his sister a questioning look. She proceeded to tell him how she had seen him and his _paramour_ in the market and how worried she was that he would do something stupid.

"I'm fond of Olive," she told him.

"As am I."

"I don't wish to see her come to harm."

"Neither do I," he returned slowly, his posture stiffening a bit.

"What do you think will happen if you get a bastard on her?" the girl asked coldly. "What do you think will happen if she learns who you really are?"

The Bear blew out a long, heavy breath and ran his thick fingers through his unruly brown hair. Finally, he spoke.

"We are being careful. _I_ am being careful."

The Cat's mouth popped open and her false eyes went wide at his words.

" _Bear_ ," she hissed, "are you telling me that since the last time we spoke, you've gone from _doing nothing improper_ to _being careful_?"

The boy grinned sheepishly and tried to jape with her, saying, "Well, Cat, I gave you your chance, but you seemed rather taken with another man…"

" _Bear!_ "

"…and now, you come crawling into my bed! If I had known that all I had to do to get you beneath the blankets with me was bed another woman, I would have done it _ages_ ago."

" _BEAR_!"

"I know," he said, his voice suddenly small and sullen. "I know, Cat. But, what do you want me to say? I _love_ her. What can I do?"

"I was never under your blankets," the girl grumbled. "And you need to walk away from her, brother. Before it gets any worse."

The Lyseni acolyte looked at his sister with dark eyes forlorn and asked, "Could you?"

She thought about his question and the sadness with which it was asked and she honestly did not know. The Kindly Man had essentially told her to walk away from Jaqen, but only for a time. That was hard enough. If she were told she must _never_ see him again, could she do _that_? Could she do it if in doing so, she could save both of them from some harm?

She wanted to believe that she could, because it would be the right thing to do, but she didn't know.

She stood up from the Rat's bed and crossed the small space to her brother, settling next to him on his mattress. She placed her arms around him and rested her cheek against his chest, sighing.

"We're a fine pair of lunatics," the Cat told him. "We know that what we do will end in sorrow, and yet we do it anyway."

He returned her embrace, dropping his chin to rest on the top of her head, and replied hoarsely, "Maybe when they exile us, they'll send us together. It wouldn't be so bad if you were there, too."

He could feel her smile against his skin and it gave him a little comfort.

The girl and her brother talked a while longer, though it was mostly her admonishing him to _be smart_ and _do the right thing_ and _take care_ and his protestations that he was nearly helpless, so in Olive's thrall was he. She also told him she would have need of his assistance in two days and they discussed the details he needed to know in order to deliver her what she required on the day of Lidia's feast and betrothal. Finally, they parted, the girl saying she needed to get back to the manse.

"I have my own problems to solve," she told him fondly. "I can't spend _all_ of my time on _yours_."

"Come back anytime," her brother told her, patting the mattress next to his reclining form. "I'm here every night, sleeping naked."

She rolled her eyes at him and then left him chuckling in his cell.

The Cat made her way swiftly through the temple, seemingly avoiding notice, and was soon in the courtyard garden, bound for the familiar dark bench. As she placed the sole of her boot on the bench so that she might boost herself up into the nearest tree and climb the wall that separated her from her path back to the manse, two arms swiftly snaked around her, one pulling her back by her waist and holding her against a hard, warm body while the other slipped under her arm and across her chest so that the hand might muffle any cries from her mouth. She could not see him, but she knew it was Jaqen; she could smell his hair, clean and freshly scented and spicy.

"A girl is quiet, and friends may speak once again, yes?"

She nodded even as his words called her back to an earlier time, when she was a little mouse in the dark of Harrenhal and a man had stolen into the place where she slept on the cold floor, waking her to offer her a gift in secret. A gift of death. _Three_ deaths. Payment for the Red god but in truth, the first taste of power she had been given since Jon had slipped Needle into her small hand.

_A girl says nothing. A girl keeps her lips closed, no one hears, and friends may talk in secret, yes?_

She shivered and she was not sure if it was the memory or her fear of being found out (and the _consequences_ their disobedience might have) or just her master's closeness that wrought from her the shuddering response. The Cat fought to control her body, forcing herself to stand in stillness as her master withdrew his arms.

She turned around quickly, pulling herself closer to the tree, enrobing herself completely with the shadows, hoping to remain undiscovered by those who would not be happy to see her conversing with her master. There was no one else in the garden at this time of night, but still… The Kindly Man seemed to have a way of knowing that which he could not possibly have seen with his own eyes. The girl had seen too much that was unexplainable to assume anything was impossible.

The Cat stared up at her master's shadowed face, wondering what he had to say to her that was worth risking the displeasure of the Kindly Man.

"Did a girl find she was unable to manage the laces on her breeches?" the Lorathi purred quietly. "A man is happy to help, but this was a long way to walk for such assistance."

_Of course_ , she thought, sighing as she watched a small smile form on his lips.

"Jaqen, I'm not in the mood for this. For us to even speak is dangerous, so say what you need to and let's be done with it."

The assassin reached out with his one hand and cupped Mattine's chin, lifting it so that she was looking into his eyes; _so that he might read any lie he found there._

"A girl has come to the temple, yet has not sought her master. A man would know what business brought her here, then."

* * *

_**I Am the Highway**_ —Audioslave

_**In a Little While**_ —U2 (That girl, she's mine. Well, I've known her since she was a little girl)

_**I Alone**_ —Live

_**Whispers in the Dark**_ —Mumford and Sons


	45. Chapter 45

The Cat stared through the dark night and into her mentor's face. Was it mere curiosity that had drawn him after her into the garden, in defiance of the will of the very elder Jaqen had nearly _constantly_ warned her against disobeying ever since his return from Westeros? Or was there something more?

"Why aren't you asleep?" she questioned him in a whisper. "It's late."

"A man has found that sleep eludes him since..."

Her master's voice trailed off.

"Yes?"

... _since he has learned to fear losing a lovely girl,_ he could not say.

"A girl has not answered a man's question," Jaqen pointed out, ignoring the Cat's prompt. "What has drawn a wealthy man's cupbearer to the House of Black and White at this dark hour?"

"I came here to warn my brother..." the girl began but then hesitated. Did Jaqen know of the extent of the Bear's relationship with Olive? He was her mentor and the person she trusted most but he was also a Faceless master with an obligation to the order. She did not want to expose the Bear and Olive to more trouble than they had already earned. She felt a compulsion to protect them, at least as much as she was able, mostly because she felt partially responsible for the fact that the two were even together. Well, that and the fact that she was very fond of them both. She fell short of categorizing her feelings for her friends as _love._ She had not yet learned to be comfortable with the word, despite her begrudging acknowledgment of her feelings for her master.

"Warn your brother?" the Lorathi impelled.

"Yes," she replied simply, wondering if he would let it go.

Jaqen looked at the faint outline of her face in the shadows, probably with a quizzical expression but it was hard for her to judge in the darkness. He shrugged slightly and then murmured to her in the common tongue.

"A girl may keep her secrets, then. But in the future, she may wish to have more care about visiting the bedchambers of men in the middle of the night, lest she acquire a _reputation_."

"I already have a reputation," the girl reminded her master, "as someone who doesn't care what other people think."

"And you really do not wish to tell a man what this thing is that brought you all the way across Braavos when you ought to be sleeping?"

_What secrets does a Cat have that a man should not know?_

_If I told you, they wouldn't be secrets anymore._

She bit her lip, a gesture that signaled her uncertainty even through the dark of the night. _Was she sure? He might have wisdom to offer her in the matter._ Deciding she could not risk Jaqen bringing the matter to the council, she finally nodded and closed the door on the subject once and for all. The apprentice knew without a doubt that her master would do all in his power to protect _her_ from the retribution of the council but she did not believe that his courtesy would extend to her friends.

"Jaqen, I really should go," the Cat told her mentor quietly, looking around the courtyard garden nervously. "If someone sees us..."

"Just so, lovely girl," he agreed, "but a man must warn you to be on your guard in the manse. This man you call _handsome..._ "

"I know," the girl interrupted him quickly. "I saw his scar."

Jaqen was perplexed. He waited for her to explain further. She read his request in his shadowed face and in the way he held his body and provided him the details she knew he wanted.

"We were sparring and I grabbed his shirt. The neck ripped..."

"How does a small girl find herself grabbing at a man's collar while sparring?" he asked curiously. "Did you run him through?"

"No. We weren't sparring with swords," she explained. "No weapons. Just hand to hand."

She smiled slightly at the memory, thinking, _Well, there was_ one _weapon. Just a small one._

"A girl was _brawling_ with a man's brother?" Jaqen questioned in a tone of surprise mixed with apparent distaste.

"Not exactly. It's a bit more... _elegant_ than brawling," the Cat replied, recalling all the moves and counter-moves and sweeps of the leg and blocks that the Faceless sellsword had taught her (and _used_ on her). Combined with the tumbling and leaps she had learned by watching the Rat, the fighting style could not fairly be called _brawling._ "It's rather like dancing, really, only people get knocked down. But the point is, at the end, I pulled him down by his shirt and it ripped."

"A girl ripped a _handsome man's_ shirt off? While she was dancing with him?"

She could see Jaqen cross his arms over his chest. He sounded... _disapproving._ His jaw had a particular set then as he bore into her face with his eyes. She almost felt as if she could detect a certain heat radiating from his bronze eyes, though in truth, she could not pick out the color of her master's irises there in the dark. Everything was composed of varying shades of grey and black.

"No, I didn't rip it _off_ ," the girl corrected. "Not _completely,_ and we were fighting, not dancing. Look, it's all rather hard to explain. What's _most_ important is that when his shirt ripped, I saw a healing wound on his arm, obviously from a blade, and realized that _I_ was responsible for it. He was the one man I was able to injure in my cell that night."

_There was his proof._

"What did a girl say?" Jaqen demanded, sounding urgent suddenly. "How did this man respond?"

"I didn't really say anything," the Cat admitted. "I asked him how he got the scar and he gave me some reply or another, nothing detailed or specific, but I realized how it must have happened and I just left without saying anything else about it. I haven't seen him since. I... I sort of came here to avoid seeing him, as well as to speak with my brother."

Her master seemed thoughtful.

"A man is concerned for his apprentice..." the assassin muttered and then said, "this manse may no longer be safe for a girl."

The Cat bristled a bit at that, saying, " _He_ ought to fear _me_." It was too dark for him to see her eyes well, but he could easily imagine the indignation they radiated just then.

"Courage and sense, lovely girl," her master admonished her and she frowned at him ( _she always hated when he said that_ ). "Remember that he is a _master_ and you remain an _acolyte_."

 _Not for much longer,_ she thought.

"It won't be a contest of who can conjure the most convincing false face," the girl retorted. "I've bested him with steel while sparring. I've held my own when we fought without weapons. I can pick out his thoughts..."

Jaqen grabbed her abruptly, his fingers digging into her upper arms as he pushed her back against the trunk of the fruit tree.

"Does a man's brother _know_ you can do this thing?" the master assassin demanded.

The girl gasped at his sudden vehemence. The Cat bit Mattine's lip, her brow furrowed with unspoken worry, causing her master to give her an impatient shake as he repeated his question.

" _Does he know, foolish child?_ "

"Yes," the girl admitted, sounding both ashamed and worried, "but _I_ didn't tell him. Someone else did. He told me he was _informed_ that I could do it but wouldn't answer me when I asked him _who_ had informed him." _A small part of her had wondered at the time, if only for a few seconds, if it had been Jaqen that had told the handsome man that she was a warg._

It was as if all of Jaqen's fears were being realized. The Cat's talent was known. _If his brother knew, it was safe to assume he had learned this from the principal elder. But his master had given no clue that he was aware of the girl's gift. What's more, he had made no attempt to train the girl or help her hone her skill. Why not? Surely, a girl's Kindly Man meant to exploit her unique ability in the service of the order. Wouldn't he want her to be as practiced as possible in her special art?_

"Lovely girl, a man cannot abandon you to these dangers," the Lorathi told her, thinking, _A man could not live with himself if..._

Jaqen closed his eyes briefly and drew in a slow breath to push away the troubling thoughts trying to take root in his head. He was still gripping her arms almost painfully. _Why?_ he wondered as his frustration grew. _Why so much? Must everything be a challenge? Is there to be no peace?_ It was a small, brief, and uncharacteristic fit of self-pity. After indulging in it for a mere moment, he chastised himself for the useless track his thoughts were taking.

His apprentice looked up at him, frowning a little, narrowing Mattine's doe-eyes, undoubtedly preparing to argue with him.

 _Arya Stark,_ Jaqen prayed silently then. _Do not take her from me._ Was the Many-Faced god listening? A small sense of hopelessness was budding inside of the master assassin and he struggled to smother it, but found it refused to be snuffed and would not die. _It was as if he was fighting fate and circumstance and the machinations of men and his lovely girl's pigheadedness, all at once. It was too much, but there was aught for it but to fight on and on. The alternative did not bear contemplating..._

"Jaqen, there is nothing to be done for it. The Kindly Man has forbidden me to have contact with you, and I have a task that _must_ be completed," the girl pointed out. "What can you do? You cannot protect me forever. It's not your place..."

"It _is_ a man's place!" the Lorathi interrupted forcefully. "A man is a girl's _master,_ and if not your master, then _who_ will protect you?"

"I will protect myself," the Cat insisted.

He released her arms and held his hands up for emphasis, speaking slowly as if to be sure she understood him clearly, saying, "You will stay in a man's bedchamber tonight so that he may be sure you do not have your throat slit in your sleep or get tossed to the eels, and then a man will speak with the principal elder in the morning. A man will handle this _Biro_ himself, but you are not going back to the manse."

Jaqen spoke with authority, his tone clearly trumpeting his seriousness. There was no doubt about his feelings on the matter. For her part, the girl was simply... confused. She felt so many things just then. She was aghast. She was perhaps a little relieved. Embarrassed. Anxious. Rebellious. Frightened.

_Determined._

Her voice was quiet but firm as she responded to his directive, saying, "No."

Jaqen was surprised that she had answered him at all, as he had been expecting her to comply obediently with this plan.

"What does a girl mean, _no_?"

 _What_ did _she mean?_

_No, you will not tell the Kindly Man that we have spoken and put yourself in danger for me. No, you will not treat me as a child again. No, I cannot tolerate you doubting my abilities. No, I will not run away and hide from enemies I know I am capable of defeating. No, I will not give in to my fears. No, I will not allow you to take this task from me when I am so very close to success. No, I will not leave my mission incomplete to become a disappointment to the council. No, I cannot be with you in your bedchamber and risk complete humiliation if I am discovered._

_No, I cannot be alone with you tonight because I might forget myself and tell you that I love you and then lose you like I have lost everyone else who ever mattered to me in this world._

"I mean... _no_."

"Defiant girl!" he hissed, and she knew he was displeased, "A man can see the stubborn notions swirling around in your head, even here in the dark. Give up this foolishness and see reason. You must obey your master in this."

"No."

He returned his hands to her arms and shook her again in frustration. After a few seconds, reading her determination as clearly as if it had been written in ink across her face, he seemed to sag a little and then drew her close in to him. The Lorathi pressed his forehead against hers and sighed deeply.

"A man does not know what to do with you, stubborn girl."

"There is nothing you need do," she whispered, trying to reassure him again that he had taught her too well for either of them to fear what was to come. "You have already done it all."

"Not all, Arya," Jaqen lamented softly.

She pulled away from him slightly and looked up at him with questioning eyes. He simply shook his head at her and, taking her face and cradling it with his palms, he kissed her false curls.

"What would you have of a man, then?" the Lorathi murmured into her hair.

What _would_ she have of him? More than he could give her, she knew. More than he would allow her to take. More than she could ever be due.

 _Tell him,_ her little voice urged and the very thought made her shudder. It was fear, and she hated herself for feeling it. She feared nothing, except _that;_ except laying herself bare and awaiting the inevitable rejection and the pain of loss.

_What would you have of a man, then?_

_I would have your lips. I would have your touch. I would have your breath against my skin._

Every attempt to rebuild her pack had failed; every effort had been thwarted. All around her, her pack had died or left, abandoning her one by one until there was no one else but her. She was a lone wolf, but the lone wolf dies. _The pack survives but the lone wolf dies,_ but she had _not_ died. She had survived and was alive still, and so she was _not_ a lone wolf; could not be.

She was a cat.

The Cat needed no one.

_What would you have of a man, then?_

_I would have your devotion. I would have your promise to stay. I would have your love._

_I would have_ you.

 _You see? You know exactly what to say,_ her little voice cajoled. _So say it. It's not so very much to ask, is it? Perhaps he won't refuse you..._

_Stop!_

The girl could not survive another great loss.

And the Cat needed no one.

_What would you have of a man, then?_

"I would have you be cautious," she finally answered. "I would have you not be discovered here and suffer the consequences of having disobeyed the Kindly Man. I would have you trust that I am capable of completing this mission and returning here _unharmed_."

 _To you,_ she did not add.

 _To a man's arms,_ he did not reply.

"Listen to a man, sweet girl," Jaqen urged. "You must not cross a man's brother. A man knows this assassin very well. He will not be deceived by you. He is more clever than he allows others to know him to be, he is _ruthless,_ and he is dedicated to the order. _Do not cross this handsome man_."

The Cat was glad of the darkness as she felt her face coloring. Had her master somehow deduced the shape of her half-formed plans to obtain information from the Faceless sellsword? No, she was sure his response would have been more... _intense_ if he suspected that she had thought to...

 _Use flirtation as a tactic?_ her little voice offered helpfully.

Instead of the chastisement she would have expected if her mentor truly understood her intentions, he sounded more worried for her. _He must not know what I am planning._ The warning about his brother was rather _dire,_ she thought. Of course, the man _did_ try to drown her. And she _had_ thrown a knife at him for his efforts. It was possible the handsome man would be peeved about the injury. But if that were the case, wouldn't he have struck before now? He had ample opportunity to attack her in Lord Atius' house. Instead, the Faceless master had actually been helpful with her training and even seemed to be protecting her somewhat.

 _Well, not from the back of Biro's hand,_ the acolyte amended in her head.

When she did not respond to him, her master's tone became more insistent.

"A man will have your promise, lovely girl, or you will not leave the temple."

The girl sighed, and then nodded.

"A man would hear the words," Jaqen persisted, pulling back to regard her face.

"I promise that I won't cross him."

This seemed to content the Lorathi and he released the girl from his arms and watched as she quickly clambered up the tree and then leapt from the upper branches to the courtyard wall, perching herself on the top. She looked down at him as she swung one leg over the wall, giving him a little half-smile and a small salute before she silently dropped to the other side, vanishing from the assassin's sight.

* * *

The Cat stole back into the manse, scaling the garden wall once again and climbing in through the same window she had used to escape the house earlier. She made her way quietly to her chamber, pulling her doublet off as she kicked the door shut behind her with the toe of her boot. She did not bother with the taper but just shed her clothes quickly as she walked toward her bed, dropping her doublet near the door, then one boot in the middle of the floor and the other by her bed, and finally unlacing her breeches and kicking them off as she dropped onto her mattress exhausted. Her last action was to remove the blade at her wrist and tuck it carefully beneath her pillow, leather strap and all. All of this she did in the dark, and rather gracefully too, she thought. _Who needs a candle?_ As she pulled her sheet over her nearly naked form, she rolled to face her wall, her back toward the door, and as she did, she struck something firm and warm. Before she could yelp her surprise, she heard a familiar voice speak in japing tones.

"How scandalous, little wolf," the handsome man scolded. "I thought that all proper, highborn ladies wore shifts or sleeping gowns to bed. It seems all you have on are your small clothes."

As the assassin spoke, the girl felt his calloused palm on her bare middle as if exploring her skin in order to confirm that she wore only the barest underthings. Her heart hammered in her chest and for a small moment, she feared he might place his hand over it and know her fear. The girl struggled to rule her emotions and be still. Hadn't she had some sort of plan regarding this interaction? She couldn't quite call it up just then as her exhaustion and her shock at finding an assassin in her bed conspired to rob her of her wits. She faintly recalled something about asking him why he had tried to kill her...

_Do not cross this handsome man._

She still had not spoken, just as frozen beneath the master's exploring fingers as she had been in her dreams of the cold crypts beneath Winterfell. The Faceless Man had moved his hand around the curve of her waist and seemed to be... _stroking her back?_ Her skin prickled at his touch. _Wait,_ she thought to herself in confusion, _is_ he _seducing_ me? _That wasn't the plan!_

"The Cat has nothing clever to say?" he asked in a murmur as he hauled her to him. His other hand slipped under her pillow and the girl felt her heart clench. _That was her only blade..._

"What are you doing here?" she whispered.

"Well, that's not exactly clever, but it's a fair question nonetheless."

The girl felt the length of the cool blade of her small dagger pressed into her back. He did not threaten her with its point or sharp edge, but he let her know he had it and it was _there._ She wiggled slightly, testing her space to maneuver, wondering if she might slip quickly from his grasp by moving _downward,_ through his arms and to the floor over the foot rail of her bed, but the handsome man felt her subtle shift and threw his one leg over hers, weighing her down further and trapping her in place. She could feel the outline of his boot through her sheet. _How rude_ , she thought, _he could have at least removed his boots._ Her sheets had been clean. _Well, fairly._

"Are you going to answer me?" she demanded to know.

"Hmm, how about _this_ instead," the master responded. "As I am the master here, _and_ I have the knife, _and_ you are essentially incapacitated, which was far too easy, by the way. Remind me to show you a few things later that may help you if you ever find yourself in this situation again..."

The girl growled in frustration, earning a small chuckle from Owen.

"How about _you_ answer _my_ questions," he finished.

"You haven't asked any."

"How _does_ your master tolerate your impudence, little wolf?"

"He sighs a lot."

"He _would_."

Though it was dark and he could not see her, she glared at the handsome man anyway. He must have sensed the response somehow, because he chuckled again. She failed to see what was so _bloody_ _amusing_ about all of this, and she told him so.

"Oh, much and more, young one. For instance, I was sent here to protect you, yet you fear me."

"I don't!" she insisted, a little too quickly. "I fear _no one_."

"Then why is your heart pounding like a war drum beneath your breast?" he inquired.

_Damn him to the seven hells! Each one, in turn! No, all of them, all at once!_

"Well... you startled me, is all!" the Cat sputtered. "I expected to fall into my bed and go to sleep, not to spar in my underthings!"

"Is this your idea of sparring, little wolf?" the Faceless sellsword asked in mock surprise. "What _has_ that Lorathi been teaching you?"

She paused, ignoring his jape for a moment, and thought on what he had said.

"What do you mean, you were sent here to protect me?"

"I was given to understand that you had mastered multiple languages. Is this not true?" he asked, his voice heavy with false concern. His sarcasm was setting her teeth on edge and her hands balled themselves into fists, itching to clout him. He felt her rising irritation and tightened his hold on her, making it harder for her to breathe.

"What do you even..." the girl started.

"Mean?" the assassin finished for her, anticipating her question. "I mean that what I said was not a riddle but a straightforward statement. I was sent here to protect you."

"A fine job you're doing, too!" she spat.

"I think so. What harm has befallen you since entering the manse?"

"Well, I found an _intruder in my bed_ , for one thing!"

"Not nearly as often as you would have if I had not been here," Owen returned lightly.

"What does _that_ mean?"

"Would you be more comfortable if we spoke in another tongue?" the master said, sounding mildly irritated. "This one seems to be confusing you. _I mean exactly what I just said_."

_What was he talking about?_

The Cat heard the handsome man's exasperated sigh and then he spoke again, saying, "Do you truly not know how many times I have turned Biro from your door in the dark of night? Do you not know how I have kept him from creeping in here while you slept and taking what he wanted? Do you not know how many times I have given him Sweetsleep so that he would not be able to come back here once I had left?"

" _What_? No..."

"Oh, yes, little wolf. I assure you it is the truth. And it's getting much harder to be creative, too, so I for one will be glad when you finish this particular task and we can both go home."

"But... _why?_ "

"Because I tire of this face and these clothes, and because between training you, guarding you, and tending to Biro, I'm not getting much sleep."

"I didn't mean why would you be glad to go home," the girl spat. "I meant why are you protecting me?"

"I believe we agreed that you were to be answering _my_ questions."

"We agreed to _nothing_ ," she told the handsome man in haughty tones. "And I don't need your protection! I've _told_ you, I've told my master, and I'll tell the _Kindly Man_ if need be. I can _handle_ Biro. I _am_ handling Biro!"

"Have you forgotten your lesson in the corridor, little wolf?"

"You're a Faceless master," the Cat pointed out. "Biro is a soft, lecherous old man who relies on guards to protect him. I hardly think he would be capable of _your_ particular variety of treachery."

"He's more than twice your weight and he has over six inches on you. That counts for quite a bit, especially when you're _sleeping,_ Faceless Man or not! Believe me when I tell you that Biro is capable of his own sort of treachery."

"But he would be unarmed and I have my blade."

"So, you propose to cut his throat and fail at your mission in order to protect your virtue? I had always thought you more clever."

"It seems that _you're_ the one concerned about my _virtue_ ," the girl countered. "I've not mentioned it once."

For once, the handsome man was silent. The Cat sensed a weakness and dove in, ignoring her master's recent warning; guiltily pushing aside her promise. _Do not cross this handsome man._

 _He started it!_ He's _crossing_ me! she told herself. The Kindly Man always accused her of quibbling when she made excuses but her little voice had no such qualms about her justifications.

"Is that the sort of protection you meant, _Owen_?" the girl whispered, moving her face closer to him so that her words were spoken almost against the flesh of the sellsword's neck. "Is it my _innocence_ that is being defended?"

Again, he said nothing.

"Because it wasn't my _face_ ," she continued. "You didn't seem inclined to protect me when the wealthy man was striking me."

She waited for a response, and receiving none, she pressed him further.

"Is it only Biro who you wish to thwart? Is this some conspiracy to ensure he doesn't leave any bastards to lay claim to his fortune or ruin his good name? Is Vorena behind it all? You should tell her she's a little _late_. That man has dropped bastards all over Braavos."

Owen did not answer her and she could hear his steady breathing. _So calm_ , the Cat thought with vexation. She resolved to disturb his calm.

"Or is that not it _at all_?" the girl asked, giving the impression with her voice that she had made a discovery. "Is it really about... _me?_ "

The practiced way his breathing remained _smooth_ and _regular,_ the obvious and complete lack of care, the feeling that he was not bothered _in the least_ by her words was, in itself, a sort of admission. The signal was small and it was quiet, but he was _too_ calm. It would not be noticeable to anyone who had not spent time within the walls of the House of Black and White. Indeed, if she had not spent as much time in the handsome man's company as she had of late, she would not have perceived the sign. But it was there. _And she was right. It was about her. How utterly unexpected!_

"What is the price placed on my maidenhead?" she asked rather bluntly, thinking to shock him into revealing something. "It must be very great, to earn the careful tending of a Faceless master."

The lack of a response from the handsome man was beginning to grate on the Cat's nerves. The apprentice pushed more forcefully at the master's wall of silence, her tone becoming more demanding, sounding overtly displeased.

"Who would purchase such protection, _Owen_? Who would engage an assassin to guarantee my _purity_? I'm _no one._ "

"Where were you tonight, little wolf?" the man inquired softly, ignoring her questions. His voice gave the merest hint of a threat underneath the quiet murmur and she felt the suggestion of violence in his hands as they gripped her just a little tighter.

"What if I were to say I was whoring around Ragman's?" the Cat queried, sounding suddenly amused and curious, keeping her voice light so as not to betray the worry she felt that _this_ master might discover she had been in the company of _another_ master, and very recently; one she was forbidden to see. "Would that be of interest to you?"

"Were you with him?" the assassin continued as if she had not spoken. She knew exactly who he meant.

"Would you be jealous if I were?" the girl asked, tilting her head slightly upward so that her nose brushed against the handsome man's ear. He was very, very still and she breathed out slowly and continued, "Or would it bother you more to know that I was in your apprentice's bed?"

 _It was technically true. Well,_ on, _more than_ in.

The Faceless master gave a little laugh at that.

"Since I know my apprentice was not in there with you, it would not bother me in the least."

"It would bother you if he had been?"

"Not _me_ , my dear, but my _brother_ would be most unhappy."

"You keep saying that, but you never tell me _which_ brother," the girl pointed out, angling her head slightly so that her lips were practically brushing the earlobe of the handsome man before she spoke again in a whisper. "I think you're hiding behind your _brother._ I think you must want me for yourself."

It was a bold assertion and one the girl did not believe for a minute, but she felt it would get a response from the assassin. She was right.

The master assassin snorted slightly, asking in amused tones, "And what if I did, little wolf? What would you do about it?"

"Well, first I would advise you not to mention it to Jaqen," she began, earning a more substantial burst of laughter from him.

"And why is that? Do you think he would _sigh_? Or would he mourn your loss to a rival?"

"I think he would gut you," the girl replied truthfully just before her lips parted slightly and she gently nipped the handsome man's earlobe, "and I don't think he would mourn you at all." The master breathed in deeply just once before he responded to the girl's words.

"Why do you suppose he cares so much?"

The master's voice had a tone to it that made her uncomfortable. He seemed to want her to question her master's motivations but she did not understand why, unless he meant to undermine her trust in Jaqen. _Like the Kindly Man had seemed to want to do earlier._ The girl began to suspect then that the handsome man and the Kindly Man were somehow both at the very center of all the plotting and dangers and unknowns and mysteries that had dominated her life of late. _She supposed she could just ask the Faceless Man if it were true._

"Don't all masters care about their apprentices?" she asked innocently instead. "Don't _you_ care about the Rat?" She punctuated her question by barely tracing the curve of his earlobe with her tongue with a touch so light, it almost felt as if he were imagining it.

"Not the way the Lorathi cares about _you,_ little wolf," the assassin answered in a growl before he rolled with her onto her back and buried his lips in the sensitive flesh of her throat.

* * *

After the Cat left his bedchamber, the Bear, awakened from his dream about Olive, had trouble getting back to sleep, so filled was his head with thoughts of his love. _Well, her and his own maddening sister._ He had been shocked to see Cat in his cell—in all the years they had trained under the same roof, she had never once stepped foot through his door. But then, it was almost as if she still hadn't; _Mattine_ had.

 _I miss her real face,_ the Lyseni thought, but then smiled a little to himself. _Don't ever tell her, though._ He could well imagine her reaction. It would probably start with a scowl, include a few profane words and accusations about his suspect intelligence, and then end with a forceful clout or a bloody nose. _That girl is something._

The acolyte called up Olive's face-her dimples, her curls, her almond-shaped eyes-and then he thought of her as he had last seen her, cap tossed to the ground, tangled in the sheets of her bed, smiling up at him. She had been beautiful and warm and perfect. _I wonder if she's asleep._

 _Of course she's asleep, stupid,_ he heard in the Cat's voice. _You should be too._

He should be, but he was not, and he _could_ not, so he rose and dressed and hurried from his cell, determined to pay Olive a visit, driven by lust and love and memory. _And the damn Cat. Thanks for waking me up, sister. If I get caught, I'm blaming you!_

 _You should leave that girl alone,_ he was sure the Cat would tell him, _before one of you comes to grief._ But what was he to do? He was sure to come to grief if he did _not_ see her. The need for her consumed him and quickened his pace.

The Bear made his way carefully across the city avoiding those places where _Bravos_ were likely to be prowling. His long strides carried him quickly and he soon found himself at the inn. He knew the kitchen door would be bolted, but his master had taught him a useful trick that made the bolt no barrier at all, and silently, he entered the inn from the alley he had frequented when the Cat lived here, working as an inn's cook. He moved swiftly through the kitchen, not wishing to disturb the new (old) cook who slept nearby (over top of the Cat's blades, though neither the Bear nor the cook knew of them). He needn't have worried; the woman's loud snores announced how deep was her slumber all the way to the other side of the door to the common room.

 _I hope there are no guest rooms above hers,_ the large boy thought, _or Staaviros will be getting complaints about the noise in the morning._

The Bear made his way up the stairs, avoiding the ones that creaked the loudest, and found himself at Olive's door. He pressed his ear to it but heard nothing and so employed his trick once again, letting himself into her room. The serving girl was sleeping quietly, her face peaceful and her wild hair splayed all around her. Asleep, she had none of her characteristic bounce and frivolity which made her so fun and pretty and appealing to the men she served. Asleep, with no smile, no twinkling eyes, and no sway of her hip, she seemed a little sad. It awoke something in him; some protective feeling. She had no one. Her mother was dead and her father was soon to be (and never behaved as a father to her, anyway). There was Syrio, but she cared for him, not the other way around. Lidia did not know Olive was her sister and would be unlikely be happy about it even if she did know, what with her marriage to the Sealord's son soon to occur. Having a bastard half-sister who worked as a tavern girl was not much of a recommendation in those places where pedigree was paramount. Olive had no one to care for her save the Bear himself.

Overwhelmed with feeling at the thought, he knelt by her bed and placed a soft kiss upon her lips. The girl awoke with a small startle.

"Willem?" she asked and then stifled a yawn with the back of her hand. He took that hand and kissed her wrist.

"Yes, my love."

_It still seemed strange to say; strange to hear his own voice in his ears saying such things. But it also felt right._

"How did you get in?"

"Through the door," the Bear laughed, giving her another kiss, this one on the tip of her nose.

"But it was bolted," she continued, turning to face him.

"You must have forgotten," he replied. "I walked right in."

"No," she insisted. "I never forget."

"No? Well, perhaps the bolt slipped. If you like, I will check it in the morning. It doesn't do you any good to have a bolt on the door if it slips out of place!"

"Oh, would you?" the girl beamed as the Bear lit her candle. Her dimples suddenly appeared in the flickering candlelight. "You _are_ good to me!"

It was his turn to smile and he placed his hand on her forehead, stroking her hair away from her face.

"I try to be."

They looked at each other for a long moment and the Bear drank in Olive's shining eyes and buxom curves, wondering how something so perfectly pretty could ever be _wrong_ or _dangerous._ The girl in her bed broke the spell by asking him a question.

"Why are you here, Willem?"

"I found I had to see you," he whispered, leaning down to kiss her once again. Now awake, Olive returned his kiss fervently, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him in closer. After a moment, he moved one hand down her flank, marveling at the warmth of her skin through her shift. He rested his hand on the roundness of her hip, enjoying the feel of her shape beneath his palm. Olive pulled her lips away from his slightly and snickered.

" _Now_ I see why you came," she laughed.

The Bear was abashed. He insisted he just wanted to see her and hadn't thought beyond that (it was not entirely true, of course; he had thought _many_ thoughts beyond that, but without expectation, so he didn't figure that counted as anything like _intention_. _Hope,_ perhaps, but that was not the same thing.)

"I am content at having looked upon your face," he sighed, placing his elbows on her bed as he kneeled, balancing his chin in his upturned palms. He gazed at her with a silly smile curving his mouth pleasantly.

"You and your pretty words!" the wench scolded, laughing again. It was then her turn to sigh as she pulled the boy into her bed, saying in a mockingly resigned tone, "I suppose there's nothing else to be done for it, then." And beneath Olive's touch, the Cat's warnings and worries faded away and his own contentment at having looked upon the tavern girl's face gave way to his need to _have_ her and hold her and breathe her in as if she was the very air he required to survive.

"Oh, my love. My beautiful girl," Lyseni murmured softly against her cheek as the girl's hands worked at the laces of his breeches and then all he knew was warmth and bliss.

* * *

It seemed that no one who could claim the House of Black and White as home would have an easy time with sleep this night. The Cat lay in her bed ruminating about her _discussion_ with the Faceless sellsword she encountered unexpectedly as he lounged in her bed (where he had situated himself, uninvited, _without_ having removed his boots first). Her time left for sleep was short now, but she found her exhaustion had abated nearly instantly when she was confronted with... _an enemy?_ _A messenger?_ Well, a _Faceless Man_ at any rate, which made him a serious threat and no one with whom she should trifle. _And she had not trifled with him._

_Well, maybe she had. Just a little._

_And she had most definitely managed to exasperate him. Perhaps more than a little._

_The handsome man's lips were moving across her throat. At first, he had pressed his mouth against her firmly and she had gasped involuntarily, startled. He had been so still and unresponsive as she gave her soft little seductive hints that the girl had begun to believe that he would not rise to her bait. But then, all of a sudden, he was pressing her into her mattress, the thin, flat hilt of her diminutive throwing dagger digging into her back, and his lips were at her neck, though what he was doing with them, she wasn't sure. She was not experienced with men, it was true, but still, the way he held his mouth against her skin and gave an abbreviated groan did not seem to be anything that could be called kissing. It was more like... hesitation. Or consideration. Or perhaps even some sort of struggle, like he was trying to decide what he should do. Then she felt the lightest brush of his lips, traveling back and forth across the hollow of her throat. The touch was so soft, she wasn't exactly sure what he was doing. Kissing her lightly? Breathing in her scent? Searching for the softest spot into which he could plunge that wicked little blade he had stolen? Shaking his head no? She couldn't be certain. The Cat was sure, however, that the handsome man had not yet made the mistake that Jaqen had made when she had teased him with her tongue against his scarred flesh; this master had not loosened his grasp on her at all._

_Press on or admit defeat? she asked herself._

_Her master's words rang in her ears as she considered her options. Do not cross this handsome man, he had advised her, and then he had insisted on her promise._

_Maybe just a little further, her little voice suggested. What harm?_

_Plenty, the Cat realized, if Jaqen finds out I've defied him._

_Well, if you're too scared of Jaqen's temper to take this one gilded chance to find out about the canal plot, then go ahead and admit your defeat, her little voice taunted slyly; hatefully._

_I am scared of_ nothing _, she insisted, and with that, she arched her neck up towards the master and then, after the briefest pause, his lips changed from barely touching her skin to practically devouring it. The sensation was strange, and not entirely unpleasant but then she found that what it was most like was... tickling. The handsome man's lips (and teeth?) and breath were touching and nipping and scraping and warming her neck and the feeling was not just in her neck but also in her belly, as if when he touched her between her jaw and her shoulder, there was a cord that led from his lips to her gut and it was pulled taut, plucked like the string of a harp that vibrated and sang. Each time his mouth made contact with her, gooseprickles formed on her neck and her arms and then her gut twisted itself just a bit tighter. Each of his breaths wrought a shiver from deep within her core and tickled her mercilessly, all the way from her chin to her toes. She marveled at the strange way her body seemed to react to the stimulus with a will of its own, independent of any direction from her mind. It was fascinating to her, truly; but mostly, it just really, really tickled._

_And so, without meaning to, the Cat giggled._

_Oh, no! she thought._

_She tried quickly to stifle the noise which led to some unpleasant sounding snorts. These were anything but seductive, a thought which led to more giggling followed by more snorting and soon the handsome man simply gave up, rolling off of her with a sigh (he was beginning to understand why her master sighed so much)._

_"You are simply terrible at this," he had told her then, and she could almost feel his lips pursing themselves with consternation._

_"Well, it's not my strongest skill," the Cat admitted, giggling again as the last of her shivering tickles died and her gooseprickles melted away. After a few deep breaths and a moment of reflection, she scowled at herself, realizing that her silly, inappropriate laughter had cost her the opportunity to entice information from the master and also made her sound like a stupid little maiden._

_But you_ are _a stupid little maiden, her little voice reminded her._

_I'm not stupid, stupid! she countered, but she could not dispute the maiden part._

_"What would you say_ is _your strongest skill?" the assassin asked, even managing to sound interested. The way he carelessly laid on the Cat's bed and spoke casually to her made it seem as if they had only just been discussing what food would be served at the upcoming feast rather than engaging in the strange cat-and-mouse game of seduction between Faceless killers._

 _"Hmm," the girl began, seeming to consider her answer carefully. Then,_ swift as a deer _, she had found the sellsword's hand which gripped her blade and jammed her two fingers cruelly into the soft spot there that would lead him to release her throwing knife. He loosened his grip with a curse and as she took the blade from him, the girl scrabbled quickly over his supine form so that she could settle on top of him and pin him in place with the weapon. In the dark of her cell, the Cat held the sharp point against the large artery in his neck whose thumping she detected easily with the heel of her hand even as she threatened it with her steel._

_"I'd say my strongest skill is probably throwing blades," she finally answered him. "But I suppose you knew that already, having received a kiss from one of them just before I took this grieving sister's face."_

_With that, the Cat commanded her taper to light so that she might more easily detect the Faceless master's lies by studying his expressions. She found his false features arranged in his characteristic smirk, but behind it was something else; something more. Was he... perhaps a little impressed with her? The girl decided it was best not to ask outright. There were matters of more importance to resolve, and she was, after all, wearing only her smallclothes. With as much dignity as she could muster, she began interrogating the master._

_"Who has such an interest in my morals?" the Cat had asked the handsome man, knowing he would not be likely to give her the answer she sought, but asking him for it anyway._

_"The order has a vested interest in the well-being of all of those who train so that they might join our ranks," he replied vaguely, seeming to shrug slightly as she looked down at him. He swallowed then, and as he did, the girl's eyes were drawn to his neck, watching as the apple of his throat bobbed with his action._

_"Yet you do not seem nearly as concerned with whom the Bear lays, or even the fact that he lays with anyone at all."_

_"I'd wager that you would be surprised by what concerns the order, when it comes to the behavior and... activities of our acolytes," the assassin retorted and his words caused a small feeling of panic for the Cat. There seemed to be a warning buried in them._

_Bear, you had best be careful, she thought. Hopefully, their earlier talk had made enough of an impression on her brother to prevent him from raising the attention and the ire of the Kindly Man (or anyone else within the order who would be_ concerned _with his... behavior and activities)._

_"Would it be terribly inconvenient for you to move that blade away, little wolf?" the master asked her, sounding almost as if he himself did not care, but felt an obligation to inquire. "We both know you won't use it, anyway."_

_"I'd wager that you would be surprised by what I would do, when it comes to the use of this knife," she mimicked, reproducing his tone and cadence nearly perfectly. "And besides, I would prefer to get a few things straight with you, first."_

_"Oh? Well, then, by all means, continue with your intimidating interrogation tactics. And while you're at it, you won't mind if I just put my hands_ here, will you _?" the handsome man asked, moving his hands to either of her hips, kneading the flesh there between his fingers and thumbs. His two thumbs rested just over the front of her hip bones and his digging tickled her intensely and unbearably. She gritted her teeth but her resolve to find stillness was useless in the face of his most ridiculous assault and soon, she was wiggling uncontrollably to get away from the pressure of his fingers. Finally, she was forced to slide off of him. Once she did, she leapt to the floor, grabbing up her clothes and clutching them to herself, preserving some small amount of modesty._

_I don't really care, she tried to convince herself. This is Mattine's body anyway. Let him look._

_She thought it, but still found that she could not tolerate his eyes upon her flesh (Mattine's flesh) without coloring and so she scampered to dress. The Cat was irritated with her response to the handsome man's gaze. She knew that she really should be more mortified not by the state of her dress but by the fact that she had allowed a challenger to best her by simply tickling her. It was humiliating! It was idiotic! It was not to be borne! The Rat would die of laughter if he ever found out about it. Of all the weaknesses in the world to have, this one was the most shameful! The girl felt compelled to cover her embarrassment and so, perhaps ill-advisedly, she plunged headlong after the answers she sought._

_"Why did you toss me into the canal?" the Cat demanded as she fastened the last of the clasps on her doublet, thinking to herself that the time for trickery and games was over._

_The handsome man looked keenly at the acolyte as he sat up from his reclined position and then swung his legs over the side of her bed. Seated on the edge of her mattress, his face took on a serious look, all traces of his typical smirk absent, and he regarded her for a long time without speaking._

_"What are you thinking about?" the apprentice persisted. "And do not bother thinking of lies to mislead or assuage me! I will have the truth from you, or nothing at all."_

_The master's eyes narrowed a tiny bit but he remained silent, gazing at her tense form standing a few feet in front of him. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity to the impatient, frustrated girl, he answered the Cat's question with one of his own._

_"Why do you think you were thrown into the canal, little wolf?"_

* * *

The Faceless cupbearer had been left alone in her chamber to ponder the handsome man's question to her and she had not yet come up with a satisfactory answer, despite staring up at her ceiling and thinking on the matter until it was time for her to rise and dress in her fine gossamer gown. She stifled a great yawn with the back of her hand and then left her chamber to join in the frenzy that ensues in all great houses the day before a large feast or celebration. The activity that surrounds these events in the houses of the wealthy men of the world would rival the preparations for marching off to war seen in the seats of power of all the known kingdoms, both far and near. The ranks swelled with unfamiliar faces just the same; provisions were procured and stockpiled just the same; plans were drawn up and contingency plans were _also_ drawn up, just the same; and the nervous excitement of those about to take part in the impending events was nearly palpable, _just the same_. That was especially true in this case, as there was the certainty of death being contemplated, _just the same_ , at least in the mind of one.

Lord Atius looked nearly recovered when he walked into the small hall for breakfast, moving with more vigor than he had displayed in a week or more, despite the fresh bruises visible at his wrists and on his forearms. Though his energy had perhaps not _fully_ recovered, he felt the unique joy of one who has known some physical malady and who still recalls its pain acutely enough that to be without it seems nothing short of miraculous. He was still cautious with his intake and requested toast with honey, nuts and Mattine's tea. All of this suited the Cat's purposes very well but there was still a delicate matter that required tending before she could declare her day a success. She needed Biro alone, but not for too long, to proposition him. She also required that he drink a cup of wine from a very specific vessel. Her chance came later as she served the wealthy man in his solar where he retired after breakfast to tend to some neglected papers.

At first, Biro was not much interested in Mattine, so behind on his duties had he gotten while ill. He was sorting through his piles of correspondence, answering those letters and writs which seemed most pressing to him, setting others aside for later consideration, and balling a few up with a look of disgust, tossing them to the floor (one of them was from the Iron Bank, the Cat was fairly sure. _How strange. And interesting)._ The girl needed the dead man's attention and so she moved to retrieve the discarded papers, offering in a low voice to dispose of them in a brazier if her master desired. He looked up to see her form bent over, picking up the discarded parchment, the curve of her bare back enticingly _just_ out of reach.

"Yes, do that," the wealthy man responded, watching her move toward the unlit brazier. As she worked to create the fire (glad of his attention, as she needed a way to introduce a certain topic of conversation and drawing his eye to Mattine's form seemed the easiest way, but also frustrated that she had to light the fire through her labor rather than with the skills of the sorcerers of Asshai), she moved her body so as to show the cupbearer's curves to their best advantage. As the newly lit flames sprang to life, the girl dropped the offending papers into them (surreptitiously reading what she could before the dry parchment was turned to ash but not understanding what about them had led to Lord Atius' fit of temper) and then looked across the flames through her thick lashes at the wealthy man and gave him a shy, dimpled smile.

"Mattine, you look absolutely..." Biro began, but then said, "You are so like your sister."

"Thank you, my lord," the girl murmured, then asked, "Wine, my lord?"

"Yes, I think so. Yes, some of that sweet red, my girl."

The girl turned to retrieve the appropriate carafe and when her back was turned to the wealthy man, her lip curled unpleasantly at the memory of her last experience with sweet red wine from the Reach. Still, that night had not been entirely unpleasant. Or, at least it had improved markedly once Jaqen came back from his errand and brought her a certain gift. The cupbearer shook her head slightly, pushing the memory down so that she could focus on her current task. There would be time for Jaqen _later._

The Cat bypassed the plain pewter cups that were set out on the table next to the carafes of wine and instead, reached up to a high shelf to retrieve the unique stem that Lord Atius had not used since the day he bruised her face and broke her lip: his beautiful, gleaming silver goblet with the vine and flower petal detail and the glass bowl. There was an appalling lack of glass in the wealthy man's manse and this specimen was really quite remarkable with its near absence of bubbling. If the girl cared about such material possessions, she would have spared a moment to dedicate to regret at having to ruin such a masterful creation, but as it was, she simply thought, _There will soon be even less glass here than there is now._

She poured the wine and as she brought the goblet to Biro, he reached out for it without looking. Mattine placed the cup in his hand and the feel of it, not being what he expected, caused the wealthy man to look up at her with surprise. He raised a questioning eyebrow and his cupbearer quickly explained herself.

"My lord, it's such a fine vintage and the glass will not taint the flavor as the pewter might."

Lord Atius frowned slightly as if thinking of all the attainted wine he might have avoided through the years, but then nodded and commented on Mattine being such a clever girl as he lifted his wine to his lips. As she moved to step away from him, the wealthy man reached out and grasped the girl's wrist, pulling her closer to him.

"Mattine," Biro started, setting his goblet on the edge of his desk, "you really have been in the house for quite some time now."

"Yes, my lord," the girl agreed, telling herself not to struggle against his grip.

"It seems as if you _belong_ here, just as your sister did."

"Yes, my lord, I have been quite happy here."

"Mattine, do you... do you _know_ about your sister? I mean, your sister and _me_?"

The girl blushed and dropped her eyes, whispering, "Yes, my lord."

"Then you know how special I thought she was, and how I always strove to make her life a comfortable one."

 _Right up until you paid the order to have me assassinate her,_ the Cat thought, but Mattine simply nodded her head at the wealthy man, who was giving the girl what he thought was an indulgent smile. To the acolyte, it appeared to be more of the look a wolf might give its prey just after capturing it and just before devouring it.

"Mattine, I can make you comfortable as well. I can provide for you as I provided for your sister, if you come to me willingly."

 _Why this sudden concern for her acquiescence?_ the acolyte wondered. _Perhaps his energy is less that it appears. He may not have the strength to fight a robust cupbearer._

The large, brown doe-eyes looked guilelessly at Biro's face, waiting for him to say more, but instead of speaking, he settled his hands on her hips and the apprentice could not help but to remember the handsome man's tortuously tickling touch mere hours before. She steeled herself for the sensation so that she would not dissolve into laughter should Lord Atius bore into the traitorous spots over her hip bones. Thankfully, he did not, but neither did he speak as he gazed up at her from his seat.

"My lord," the girl whispered finally, trying to find the words to make herself irresistibly appealing to the man while avoiding having to satisfy his lust just then, "I... well, I have never..."

As she spoke, the cupbearer blushed with embarrassment and fluttered her thick lashes as if trying to blink away tears.

"Of course not!" the man declared. "Of course you haven't, my dear. I knew as much when you were so... _skittish_ with me before. But that is no matter. No matter at all. In fact, I might prefer it."

 _You would, you evil old goat_ , the Cat thought in disgust, wondering how many innocent girls had been sacrificed to satisfy this one man's lusts. Well, it mattered not. There would be no more. Not after tomorrow.

The wealthy man pulled the girl into his lap, cradling her with one arm as he ran his other hand down the side of her leg. He tugged at her skirt, pulling it higher and she managed to look nervous and perhaps a little frightened.

"Do not worry, my dear," he murmured to her as the skirt rose nearly to her knee and he placed his sickeningly soft hands on her calf, gripping it, "it only hurts for a moment."

"No, my lord," Mattine interrupted, "it's not that."

Her words gave Biro pause and he looked at the pretty morsel in his lap, his expression questioning.

"It's just... it's the day before the feast, my lord."

"Yes," he agreed. "So?" He slid his palm behind the girl's knee and then over the side of her thigh beneath the thin layers of her skirt.

"Well, my lord, the household is so busy, and there are sure to be matters requiring your attention."

"Just so," he allowed, dipping his face to her shoulder where he licked the bare olive flesh there.

"And there are sure to be... _interruptions_."

"I can be quick, my girl!" Biro assured her with a laugh. "Do not worry."

The Cat groaned inwardly. She supposed it was a good thing Atius Biro was very rich, because his wealth was surely the only thing to recommend him. Well, she supposed she had best employ whatever tricks and charms she had now, or her plan would fall to pieces in a matter of moments.

"But, my lord..." the girl replied hesitantly, "does it... does it _have_ to be?"

"Does it have to be _what,_ Mattine?" Biro asked with a tone of irritation, hating the interruption. He had moved his palm all the way up her thigh and had found that the curve of her bottom felt very pleasing against his palm.

"Does it... does it have to be _quick_ , my lord?"

The wealthy man's eyes flashed and the Cat could see that her words had been taken as more of a challenge than she had meant them and she scrambled quickly to correct her mistake.

"It's just that... _Hellind_ told me some things," the girl continued quickly. "Things that she said... would be _pleasing_ to men. And they seemed to be the sort of things that might take... a bit of time. And I just thought that if we... we were going to... well, I thought I might like to try..."

Atius' face changed completely and the wolfish look was back.

"Oh, my dear," he grinned lecherously, "that would be _splendid._ I will come to you tonight and you can..."

"But my lord," Mattine interrupted delicately, "you will want to be well-rested for this, as will I!"

The wealthy man gave the cupbearer and amused look and asked what sort of strenuous activities she had in mind for him that required a full night's rest. Allowing herself a small grin, the girl told him that he would just have to wait and see and then looked up at him through her lashes in that way that he seemed to like.

"Well, _when_ , then?" he sighed, sounding impatient.

"During the feast, my lord."

"During the _feast_?" the wealthy man echoed with incredulity. "How do you propose..."

"My lord, it is the only time all the servants will be engaged and your... your lady wife will be busy entertaining the guests. It is not unusual for one reveler to slip away for a bit of fresh air and who would miss one servant, especially later, after the supper has been served?"

"My dear, you may well be entirely too clever for your own good," the man returned with appreciation. "Tomorrow then?"

"Yes, my lord, only..."

"Only _what?_ " Biro prompted, noting the timid way the girl spoke. "Do not be afraid. Tell me."

"Only... please be careful what you eat and drink. I... I do not wish for your... _condition_ to worsen before... before we can..."

The man chuckled, saying, "I understand you completely, Mattine. I shall eat nothing but what you bring me and drink your tea until I can stand it no more. I will not fail your tomorrow."

The girl smiled charmingly at him as he told her exactly what she wanted to hear. She managed to hold that smile when the wealthy man tacked on one last sentiment that was perhaps a bit more sinister.

"Just see that _you_ don't fail _me_."

The girl's doe eyes gazed steadily at Biro's face and she nodded her acknowledgment solemnly. He pushed the girl to her feet, helping her stand, and as he did, her elbow barely grazed the wine cup perched on the edge of his desk. It was just enough to send it crashing to the floor. The look of horror on the girl's face was immediate but grew as the glass hit the stone of the floor and the delicate bowl shattered. Mattine's hands flew to her face and she gasped and then looked immediately at Lord Atius to gauge his reaction. His anger was apparent as his face grew dark and his mouth drew itself into a hard line. His jaw was clenched as he rose and stood over the frightened cupbearer. He gripped her shoulder forcefully and pushed her roughly down onto his desk, holding her there as he glared down at her. Mattine was offering profuse apologies from beneath a worried brow as the Cat assessed the man's posture, looking for weaknesses and weighing his possible responses. He seemed likely to hit her, which was expected, but the way he was looming over her suggested he might be considering other things; _worse_ things. The girl had never seen anyone as capable of switching from pleased to violent in an instant as Atius Biro.

Before Biro could act on any of his impulses, a loud knock at his solar door drew his attention and then Owen called out, "My Lord, is everything alright? We heard a great crash! Lord Atius?" and began to rattle the door pull.

The wealthy man looked back down at the frightened (calculating) girl pinned against his desk and he roughly bunched the wispy material of her skirt that lay between her legs, pressing into her delicate flesh harshly with his clenched fist.

"This had _better_ be worth it," the dead man growled in a low, threatening voice. " _Tomorrow night._ Now, clean this up!"

With that, he threw her to the floor where she landed on her hands and knees next the mess of shattered glass and wine. Reaching out for one of the larger pieces of the broken glass with her hand, she gave a faint, "Yes, my lord." Her palm was just over the sharp shard when Owen called out again to the wealthy man, asking if all was well as he pushed through the door, looking alert and ready to confront whatever danger threatened his wealthy employer.

"I am well, Owen," Biro said, stepping on the back of Mattine's hand just as her palm and fingers closed over the glass. The sharp edge pierced her flesh and she gave a little cry, jerking her hand up and clutching at her wrist as she watched the blood begin to boil over the edge of the wound. Owen flicked his eyes toward her but Biro never did, sweeping from the room imperiously, leaving the distressed girl bleeding on the floor without a glance. As Owen turned to follow him, he discreetly dropped a handkerchief on the floor at his feet and then he was gone, the door closing with a bang after the men.

The Cat gratefully scrambled for the piece of cloth and quickly bound her hand before her blood could ruin yet another gown. _If there was going to be any blood on this awful whore's dress, it would not be hers,_ she vowed. She would need it for one more day. She sighed as a small crimson spot appeared on the outside of her bandage and pressed her palm hard against the edge of the wine table near her. She held pressure for a long time, gritting her teeth and thinking to herself, _At least it is my right hand._

After a while, after her bleeding had stopped, the cupbearer cleaned up the mess, carefully gathering the broken glass up and placing all of the shards into an envelope she created from a piece of discarded parchment that she had not yet burned. This one seemed to be a communication from the Sealord, but any material would do. It was not the envelope itself but its contents she meant to make use of. Once the spilled wine was cleaned and the stem of the ruined goblet replaced on its shelf (it looked ridiculous now, with no bowl to crown it), the girl slipped from the room and made her way to her own cell, putting her precious envelope in her usual hiding place, leaving it under her mattress in the same manner as she had her poison vials, hoping to keep it safe until she had time to alter the contents and render them into a more useful form. She then returned to the heart of the manse, the kitchen, and joined in the bustle of activity that pulsed through the place.

Throughout the day, the Cat found time to change her dressing and noted that the wound to her palm was minor, more of a puncture than a laceration, and she washed it thoroughly, hoping to avoid infection. She brewed tea, assisted in the kitchen a bit, and behaved as if the feast was an exciting thing for her for the same reason it was exciting for everyone else, when, in fact, she had much more important reasons to be glad of the celebration. Who Lidia married was no concern of hers and the finery of the guests would not raise in her any envy or daydreams of better things. What she had to gain was something far greater: the keeping of her promise to Syrio, her release from this prison, and a return to the place where _he_ was. The apprentice closed her eyes and imagined Jaqen's face, arranged in the expression she thought he might have when she reported her success here to him. Then she recalled that she was not likely to see such an expression, as she was forbidden to speak with her master until she had taken her vows.

 _Well, I might accidentally run into him again,_ she reasoned, one side of her mouth quirking up. _We always seem to wind up in the garden together somehow._

And so the background of her fantasy changed from some nondescript, dim room within the temple to the courtyard garden, under the moonlight. She sighed and went about her work dreamily, looking to those who passed her as if she was mooning over the idea of handsome men in their party clothes dancing with the fine ladies of Braavos in the great hall of Atius Biro's lovely manse.

Later, when all the party preparations had been halted and the occupants of the household had retired to get their rest before the big day, the Cat returned to her cell and dug through her trunk, locating the objects she sought beneath her meager clothes: the mortar and pestle the Bear had brought her from the waif's workroom. She set about her task, fueled by her hatred of one man and her love of another.

Once she had finished with the instruments, she poured the fine contents of the mortar into a small pouch and tucked it away with her diluted Sweetsleep. Her small but important errand completed, the girl then sat back on her haunches, thinking of all that had transpired in the last few days. For one reason or another, her mind kept drifting to something that was said to her and she found she could not rest until she settled a certain matter in her mind. She rose quickly and left her cell, bound for the garden. Upon her arrival, the girl found she was alone there. Owen was nowhere to be seen. She reentered the manse with a terse greeting to the guard at the garden door, asking him where Owen slept. The guard snickered and gave her a knowing look but told her where she could find the Faceless sellsword. His rank among the guards afforded him his own cell and the girl burst into it unannounced.

The handsome man was reclining in his bed ( _of course he would be_ ), reading a parchment by candlelight. His look was one of genuine shock at seeing Mattine in his doorway, but he was no more shocked than _she_ was at finding the Faceless Man _reading_ in bed.

"What's that?" the Cat asked, pointing to the paper.

"Close the door," the man hissed, "and it's none of your business!"

When the girl had entered the room fully and shut the door behind her, the master demanded to know what she was doing there.

"Shouldn't you be resting before your big day?" he added. "You don't look as if you've had much sleep."

 _He knew damn well she hadn't had much sleep. He was the one responsible for her most recent bout of insomnia._ The apprentice scowled at him before she spoke.

"You said that I should remind you later to show me a few things that might help me if I ever found myself being wrestled by an unexpected intruder in my bed," the girl chirped. "Well, it's _later_."

"You really are the most unusual creature I have ever met," the master said, rising from his bed and walking to his desk where he tucked the parchment neatly away.

"Are you going to show me?" the acolyte demanded, ignoring his comment.

The handsome man turned to look at her and considered her for a moment over crossed arms.

"Alright," he finally agreed, but then his usual smirk appeared and he continued, "just don't tell _Jaqen_ , as I've no wish to be _gutted_."

* * *

 _ **I Want**_ _**Everything**_ **-** Cracker


	46. Chapter 46

The Cat could not help but grin as she stole swiftly and silently through the passageways of the manse as she moved from Owen's cell to her own. Though it was past midnight, it was much earlier than her typical bedtime had been of late and there were still hours before her presence would be expected at Biro's side. She planned to spend those hours in sweet slumber, making up for some of the lost sleep she had missed due to circumstance, complications, and the whims of certain _Faceless Men_. Her smile, though, was not in anticipation of peaceful rest but was, rather, due to her pleasure at the thought of _time well spent._

Recent time.

Time spent with the handsome man.

 _"_... _just don't tell Jaqen, as I've no wish to be gutted," the handsome man had said with Owen's smirking mouth after the Faceless cupbearer had demanded the master keep his word. She insisted that he teach her the skills that would have saved her from humiliation at his hand after she had returned to the manse from the temple and unexpectedly found him lounging in her bed._

_Wearing his boots._

_"Fatuous girl," the Faceless Man remembered thinking when he sensed the shock of the scantily clad apprentice at his presence in her cell. How could she not have expected him to come for her after she had left him waiting in the garden? She should have anticipated that he would hunt for her after she had the effrontery to disregard their long-standing appointment without so much as a word. Of course, the master understood very well why she had chosen to absent herself from their usual sparring session in the wealthy man's grove, though it was perhaps the least profitable way she could have elected to respond to her discovery of his wound (the wound_ she _had given him, he recalled with no small amount of admiration. It had been very dark in her chamber, after all, and yet her knife had found him. Admittedly, he would have preferred for it to have found one of the others instead, especially as the entire undertaking had been of another's design rather than his own...) Still, for a Faceless assassin,_ running away _was very rarely going to be an appropriate response to anything. The sooner she learned that lesson, the better, both for herself and for the order. He had intended to instruct her in this principle with his ambush._

_His plan had been a success. At least, he felt reasonably certain that after all that had transpired in Mattine's narrow bed, the Cat would be reluctant to employ avoidance as a tactic in the future, at least with him._

_"Don't tell Jaqen? Is that your price?" the girl had asked, mulling his words. The handsome man's tone indicated that his words were, at least in part, a jest. He spoke somewhat too playfully, she thought, considering that he had just recently tried to kill her._

_And she, him._

_It was rather disconcerting, this apparent lack of grudges. What a wondrously foreign concept for Arya Stark! It was_ not exactly _forgiveness but more like... acceptance; as if they offered each other, if not quite absolution, perhaps some degree of clemency. Five years ago, the Faceless master's actions would have landed him on a very exclusive list and his name would have become more familiar to her than her own. Well, assuming she was able to learn his name, though she supposed she could simply have referred to him as_ the handsome man _and whichever god it was that paid heed to her nightly prayer would have understood who she meant and what it was that she desired._

_"My price?" the assassin questioned the girl in an infuriatingly disinterested tone. His expression betrayed no emotion. His manner just then reminded the acolyte of the Kindly Man._

_Too much so._

_She suppressed a shudder, remembering her most recent interaction with the principal elder, but instead of dwelling on it, she displayed her typical bravado, quirking an eyebrow at the handsome man's pause, waiting for whatever was to follow._

_"No, little wolf, that is not my price; it is my requirement," the master continued, and then smirked again. "My price... we can discuss later."_

_His reply was cryptic. His look was meaningful. His smirk was... suggestive (suggestive of_ what, _she could not be certain, though she was beginning to get an inkling)._

Despite all of her recent lessons under the supervision of the handsome man, the Cat still _strongly_ believed her own master to have no true rival among the faithful of the order. When it came to being a terrifying assassin, Jaqen was second to none. With a longsword, he was a wonder. His stealth was unmatched (except, perhaps, by her own). His ability to slip into _any_ role instantly, completely and convincingly, was unparalleled. His resourcefulness, even in the face of the most austere and dire of conditions, was admirable. His uncanny ability to read people (especially _her_ ) was to be envied. His unwavering courage in the face of all manner of trials and dangers had served the order well time and time again. His nearly _endless_ patience with his apprentice's own considerable list of small sins and follies was something for which the girl was indescribably grateful. _All_ of these traits and skills were to be studied, admired, and emulated. They served to make the Lorathi the preeminent master within the order (and therefore ranked Jaqen among the most elite of _all_ assassins. _The Sorrowful Men don't even bear consideration,_ the girl thought. _Their weeping is simply ridiculous_ ). There was no doubt that the Cat craved to be just like her mentor and strove constantly to win his approval.

_But that the handsome man had his own unique and enviable talents was undeniable._

The Cat felt fortunate to have had the opportunity to receive _Owen's_ instruction (though she would certainly never tell _him_ that. His arrogance was already inflated to an almost unmanageable degree. She feared his head might be crushed under its own weight if it got any bigger and she refused to contribute to _that_ harrowing possibility. And, _come to think of it, it was probably not advisable to tell Jaqen of her newfound appreciation for his brother, either, after all of his warnings_ ). Her confidence in her own abilities had certainly grown under the handsome man's tutelage, there was no refuting it. Though she knew she would always love steel best of all ( _steel and blood,_ she thought, _are the two great pillars upon which my future will be built)_ , there was such a feeling of _power_ that filled her when she envisioned herself subduing and even _ending_ a man with just her _hands_ or a well-placed elbow that she found that the idea was completely intoxicating. The notion that armed with nothing more than the body she had been born with, she might turn an enemy's attack almost effortlessly or block a blow as effectively as if she had been supplied with a shield... it made her simply _ecstatic._ Her only regret was at having discovered this style of combat only _now._ If she had come to hand-to-hand combat earlier... If she had been allowed to practice these skills for the same number of years as she had been sparring with swords...

_And compared to my brothers, I even came late to steel._

The girl spared only a moment for lamenting _what could have been_ had she only been born a boy, then she brushed the useless sentiment aside.

 _I am what I am,_ she reasoned, _and what I am becomes more formidable by the day._

While instructing the acolyte in his own cell, the Faceless sellsword had warned the Cat that she needed _much_ more practice, but also said that he believed she would eventually be just as deadly using nothing more than her limbs and her natural speed as she was currently with her slender _Bravos_ blade or her throwing knives. When he had said that to her, the malicious smile the girl saved for her thoughts of wreaking havoc and raining destruction on her enemies ( _Ser Meryn, Ser Ilyn, Queen Cersei, traitorous crows, valar morghulis_ ) appeared, giving a terrifying and beautiful twist to her lips, and darkness radiated from within her as powerfully and irresistibly as if it had been the swell of the sea or the winds in a tempest. Had Jaqen been able to see her just then, he likely would have been torn between his well-founded worry for his lovely girl (for her innate malice carried with it always the threat of recklessness in the extreme) and his indisputable and excruciating desire to drag her bodily against him and swallow all of her vicious intent with his kiss, joining her darkness to his own for one fleeting moment. When her malicious smile appeared, along with the savage thoughts of revenge that fueled it, some part of the Cat felt, once again, like the Ghost of Harrenhal, granted power previously unimaginable to a young girl; the power over life and death; the power to silence a man forever with just a whispered word... just a whim... _her_ whim. But to Jaqen, when his apprentice transformed in this way, the girl became every inch a goddess of glorious chaos; the wild creature that held him in her thrall, mesmerized and claimed; his heart newly awakened, beating only by her leave, driven by the power of her gaze.

Even the handsome man, whose own experience with the Westerosi girl had been limited until very recently, recognized the change in her during these times and he _felt_ it as much as saw it. Every time he bested her with an unfamiliar technique or skill, he saw made plain in her face the hungry desire to master that skill (and then, once she had mastered it, he could read her need to use her newly acquired skill against _him_ as she sought her own small vengeance; recompense for tasting defeat at his hands. _As if she had any hope of succeeding,_ he would think to himself at those times, but he admired her pluck nonetheless). Every time he tantalized her with the possibilities of what she would be capable of once she attained these new skills, he felt that change as she allowed herself to dream of her future exploits (dreams which were like to be full of blood and wailing; thoughts he knew were punctuated by that violent little smirk of hers). _This_ master assassin never knew Arya Stark as the Ghost of Harrenhal and he had not seen her sow her seeds of discord enough to think of her as a seneschal of chaos. To him, when her enmity burst forth from her in the form of her cruel smile, he did not see what his brother saw within her. The unnerving way her eyes shone with exquisite darkness (eyes both true and false) and the manner in which her face changed, animating and reshaping itself into a form that was both undeniably dangerous and inexplicably sensual, made _him_ think of her as Death's own courtesan; the mistress of annihilation; beloved of Him of Many-Faces, favored and indulged.

When he saw it, the handsome assassin began to understand his Lorathi brother's fascination with this girl. It was as if she had been graced with the authority to bend His malevolent forces of ruination to her will, commanding that power with nothing more than a beguiling look and a mere gesture of her small hand.

 _As he watched, the back of that very hand pressed itself against the girl's lips in a vain attempt to hide the wicked pleasure she took at his assertion that she would someday be an instrument of doom, all on her own, without need of any weapon. The Faceless master tried to imagine another girl of the Cat's same age and station (well, the station she would have had if she had not run away to Braavos to join a mysterious guild of assassins) reacting to the news that she had the potential to become a skilled killer with talents matched only by a very few in the entirety of the world. There would probably be indignation; surprised gasps; even some fainting. There would certainly_ not _be wicked pleasure and poorly hidden grins. This girl was an exceedingly rare specimen among her peers and he took that moment to appreciate it. Beneath her false face, he imagined her storm grey eyes were lit up like lanterns, corners crinkled in delight as one side of her mouth drew itself up in the little half-smile she was unable to suppress. The handsome man knew the girl to be not quite six and ten, younger than either of the acolytes undergoing the trials with her, but with such a look, she became ageless; ethereal; an undeniable temptation._

 _"If only," he had thought to himself then, looking down at her and seeing through her false face and into her core; into all of her magnificent darkness. He discerned a tiny seed of longing within himself but he was too much a master of his own emotions to allow it to take root. No; he had his orders and they most certainly would not allow for_ that _._

_"You are small, little wolf," the handsome man had told her, "but these techniques, once mastered, will allow you to challenge much larger opponents and beat them outright. And in Westeros especially, no one will expect it. All they know of combat there is clubbing one another with large sticks."_

_"A greatsword is not exactly a stick," she retorted, laughing._

_"Same as," the master replied with a shrug, "to anyone with the skills you will have when I am done with you."_

_The girl laughed again, but she knew that not all Westerosi knights were mindless beasts when it came to fighting, no matter how this master might disparage them. There were plenty of capable swordsmen to be found to the west, and some were more than capable. Some were nearly legendary._

_"Kingslayer," she whispered to herself, remembering, and her laughter died. How she would enjoy crossing blades with him. She owed him a debt. Perhaps not quite the same debt as she owed his loathsome sister, but still... He had skulked about the periphery of every great tragedy that had ever befallen her family, going all the way back to Bran and his fall from the tower. If she thought of a tragic moment in the history of the Starks since the beginning of her memory, Jaime Lannister could be linked to it, at least indirectly. She could never forgive him for that duel with her father. She did not know all the details of it but things had gone rapidly wrong for her family afterwards and she could not help but think the Kingslayer had a hand in that. Why else flee from the capital? He had not offended her specifically enough to be added to her nightly prayer, it was true, but should they ever cross paths..._

_"Where is your head, little wolf?" the Faceless sellsword asked, calling his pupil back into the present. He had her pinned on her back, her wrists at the level of her ears, held against the master's mattress by each of his strong hands._

_"Sorry. You mentioned Westeros and it made me think of..."_

_She pictured the golden head of Jaime Lannister again, his maddeningly boyish grin splitting his face under eyes like flawless emeralds, and she made a little disgusted sound. The Kingslayer was too pretty by half, especially to be such an adroit swordsman. It was_ unseemly.

 _Jaqen is pretty, too, her little voice insisted, and he's_ masterful _with his blade._

 _Jaqen is_ not _pretty, she mentally corrected her little voice. He is... ruggedly handsome._

_Her little voice just snickered at her, the impudent thing!_

_"It made you think of what?" Owen asked the girl with glittering eyes._

_"Nothing," she growled. "What now?"_

_"You tell me. What do you think would work here? Do you have an instinct about it?"_

_The Cat pushed up against the restraints of his hands but was unable to move her wrists from the mattress. Her legs were pinned beneath his own. She thought maybe she could jab at him with her elbow but the angle was wrong even when she was able to lift it a good bit._

_"I can't move anything useful. I don't see how..."_

_"Really? Not_ anything? _"_

_She stopped and thought for a second._

_"My head?"_

_"Just so," the handsome man agreed. "But you must be careful and aim for the nose. If you hit your forehead to mine hard enough to incapacitate me, you will be just as likely to incapacitate yourself. The nose, though... The nose is soft. Try to use this part just here..."_

_He let go of one of her wrists to place his two fingers on her hairline, just at the center._

_"Why?" she wondered._

_"Your skull is thickest there. If you miss the nose and manage to hit a harder area, you will not likely fracture your own bone or render yourself unconscious. But do try to hit the nose. Hard."_

_She did not actually ram his nose with her head (though admittedly, she was tempted); she needed his instruction too much to risk serious injury to the master. He changed their positions and was then holding her as he had initially, when he had surprised her in her own bed. The Cat's chest was pressed squarely against his own, his arms encircling her and trapping her elbows firmly against her sides, rendering her arms useless. After a pause, the assassin threw his one leg over hers, just as he had originally. She was struck by a sudden thought and tried to suppress her mirth. The slight snorting chuckle was not lost on the handsome man, who, of course, could not let it go._

_"Do you believe being incapacitated is amusing, little wolf? No wonder you find yourself in compromising positions so often," he said dryly and his grip on her tightened just a little in a small display of temper._

_"I was just thinking that you're an awfully decent teacher," the girl returned. "I wondered if you had taught the Rat about fighting off attackers in his bed in this same way." Picturing the handsome man pinning his less-than-handsome apprentice against his bed by lying over top of him or wrapping the pinched-face boy tightly in his arms while instructing him on the techniques he would need to break away from such a restraint was too much for her. Her laughter burst forth._

_The Faceless sellsword rolled his eyes._

_"I thought you wanted to learn, little wolf," he commented irritably. "Or are you just here to cost me more sleep?"_

_"If I were, it would be only fair," the Cat retorted. "Besides, you weren't sleeping when I arrived. You were reading. Hmmm..._ What _were you reading?"_

_"Focus and concentration," the assassin admonished. "Grasp these fundamental abilities, and you will be halfway to victory, little wolf."_

Focus and concentration were the lessons she took with her as she left Owen's bedchamber. Well, focus, concentration, and the various ways to use one's head to break the physical hold an enemy had on one's person. He had also shown her how to use leverage if she was grabbed from behind and pinned against her attacker. She smiled again at the memory of pressing her back closer into the handsome man's chest and belly and then swiftly bending as she grabbed him and thrust him over her shoulder and onto his floor. He had made quite a satisfying _thud_ as he landed. It wasn't long after that when the master declared the lessons were over for the night and she should get some sleep and leave him in peace.

_"You'll be wanting to make final preparations, no doubt," the assassin had commented, "and some sleep might help those dark circles under your eyes."_

_The girl scowled at him, knowing his comments on her appearance were made merely to irritate her rather than out of any real concern for her well-being. A man concerned for her well-being wouldn't have thrown her, bound and gagged, into an eel-infested canal after all... But she did as he asked and left him in peace._

_For the moment._

* * *

The girl awoke the next morning feeling rested but also grasping at the edges of a dream as it faded swiftly from her memory. It had _not_ been a wolf dream, of that she was positive. _Just a regular dream,_ she thought, though Gendry was in it. _Gendry, who had asked if he should kiss her the last time she had dreamed of him._

 _No, not_ her _. Nymeria. It was Nymeria the Bull had asked for a kiss._

_"What say you, m'lady? Are you her? Shall I kiss you now and find out?"_

The Cat shook her head, trying to clear out the images of her previous dream of Gendry with Nymeria and the ghost of High Heart so that she could summon the details of _this_ dream. There was something Gendry and she were discussing and Arya couldn't quite remember it all. What she did recall was the part that made her ache and hurt, even after all these years. It was the part she wished she could forget.

There was Gendry, the towering man with the startling blue eyes, laughing as he walked next to her, saying something about _friendship_ or maybe it was about something _more_ than friendship; it was difficult now to call it up as the images seemed almost to be dissolving from her mind. But she had been with him; she remembered that much. She had walked briskly at his side, matching his stride (or, perhaps he was matching hers) and she knew that in the dream, she had _growled_ at his words, whatever they were. She was unhappy with him and her mood seemed as black as his was light.

"I never knew what it was to be betrayed by a _friend_ until you!" she had told him.

The smile on his face remained and the blue eyes held no worry in them. Then there were big hands placed on her shoulders and a sort of chiding expression on his face as he easily justified his actions to her. His words had sounded logical in the dream though she was not sure now that she was awake even what it was that he had said to her. Maybe it was all rubbish; the sort of reasoning that seems so sensible in a dream but under the scrutiny of lucidity and reality, is revealed to be entirely absurd and nonsensical.

"You taught me a hard lesson, Ser Gendry," she had told him then, emphasizing the _Ser_ in such a way as to convey her disdain (or, really, her persistent _anger_ ). "I had already learned to be careful with my trust after all that transpired in Kings Landing. But after you..."

The big man removed his warm hands from her shoulders and used them to pull her into an embrace. He was making some quiet noises she thought were probably meant to be soothing and he was swaying gently back and forth as he did so. He behaved as if he were comforting a child after a nightmare. She felt a slight shift then, and could see that she was now attired in a well-made brown dress that had been ruined somehow, torn and dusty and embroidered with golden acorns. Although there was no mirror into which she could peer, she knew her face had changed as well and was now the one she had worn when she was a girl of one and ten. Her head was crowned with a mane of shaggy, haystack hair the color of chestnuts and her child's body had barely a curve upon it, made up of more straight lines and sharp angles and hard muscle than was fitting for any highborn little lady to have.

She felt her anger simmering below the surface and fought to say what she had to say despite the embrace and the shushing and the slow rocking of the large knight who seemed to seek to calm her and dampen her acrimony.

_She did not want his comfort. He was the reason she needed to be comforted in the first place! For him to now behave as if he, of all people, could salve the wound was just... just so..._

The girl gave a strangled cry in her dream and, had anyone been in her cell as she slept and dreamed just then, they would have noted the small cry pushing forth from her followed by a deep sigh.

"After you, I learned not to trust _at all,_ " she finished in a whisper just before she woke up.

The biting sorrow continued though the dream was over and Arya drew in a great breath, blowing it out hard in an attempt to expel the unsettled feeling with which she had been left. After a few moments spent sitting up in her bed with her brow furrowed, the Cat told herself not to waste time dwelling on dreams.

 _It didn't mean anything,_ she told herself, _and besides, there is much to do today._

She actually made an attempt to groom Mattine's substantial curls and then slipped into her floating frock for what she hoped would be the last time ever. Not knowing when she would be able to make it back to her cell (if at all), she gathered the things she did not wish to leave behind. She tucked her vial of diluted Sweetsleep, her nearly empty vial of Cat Gut, and the small pouch of powder she had only recently created using the waif's mortar and pestle into a tiny pocket she had sewn into the waist of her gown (the stitches on the thing were atrocious, but it was functional and served her purpose perfectly well, even if her needlework could not be called _beautiful_. Leave those vapid compliments for people who had nothing better to do than practice their stitches. _She was a dealer of death, not a seamstress_ ).

The apprentice assassin glanced around her cell to be sure there was nothing left that would mark her as anything other than a cupbearer. She remembered the mortar and pestle and grabbed them from her trunk, meaning to take them to hide them somewhere in the manse where she could grab them later and take them back to the waif's workroom. Satisfied that she carried all that was suspect now on her person, she left the chamber and made her way to the kitchen to swallow a few mouthfuls of food before finding her station in the small hall. En route, she found a chair with a low apron set in an out-of-the-way corner and slid the waif's instruments underneath. They could only be seen if one were too lay one's head flat against the carpets and look specifically under that chair. Even if she was unable to retrieve the set later, the mortar and pestle might go undiscovered in this spot for years.

Lidia was the first to arrive in the dining area to break her fast, all nerves and energy and giggles.

"Oh, Mattine, I'm so excited!" the girl gushed, taking her seat. "The gown... oh, the _gown..._ It's just gorgeous! And the food will be wonderful, and _Willem_ is coming! He said he would!"

 _How interesting,_ the Cat thought. _All smiles for the Bear, but nothing for the Sealord's son?_

The acolyte began to suspect that the proposed marriage was not a love-match. _Well, whose marriage ever is, anyway?_ That certainly wasn't the way things were done in Westeros. Why should Braavos be any different?

"My lady, it's going to be grand," Mattine agreed kindly. "And a happy nameday to you, as well!"

"Oh, thank you, Mattine! Six and ten, a _real_ woman now! And just think," the girl said, suddenly looking very solemn, "if it hadn't been for _you,_ I wouldn't have lived to enjoy my own feast!"

"Oh, Lady Lidia, it does not even bear thinking about," Mattine soothed. "You should turn your mind to more pleasant things. Tell me of your gown!"

The Cat had to focus in order to avoid choking on the words. She was certain that there had never been a time in her life (her _many_ lives) when she had ever asked a woman to describe a gown to her. Her need to roll her eyes was almost onerous but she struggled through it without a hint of her distaste showing in her body or on her face. As the wealthy man's daughter seemed describe every single stitch of the gown in intricate detail, the apprentice managed to appear interested, thinking smugly, _How's_ that _for focus and concentration, Owen?_

Lidia prattled happily on about the gown, speaking about the garment in tones that alternated between squeaking delight and hushed reverence. The wealthy man's daughter sounded like the Cat did when describing a rare or fine weapon. The acolyte supposed that for a girl like Lidia Biro, a fine fitted gown that was strategically revealing but also appropriately modest might be the only weapon she was ever able to wield properly.

The Cat spared a small moment for pity, thinking, _How sad for most ladies, relegated to the role of wanton temptress in order to gain any power (_ the young assassin did not register the hypocrisy of her judgment, forgetting that very recently, she herself had tested just the outer edges of such a role with two different Faceless masters. Had she remembered that, she likely would have insisted what _she_ had done was different, anyway). The girl's pity was short-lived, however, when she remembered how _fine ladies_ (both those at Winterfell and at court) never seemed to spare a moment of pity for _her_ and usually had nothing more than snickers and whispered words and insults as she passed by them.

 _Let them hang,_ Arya thought bitterly. Well, all except for Lady Smallwood, who had been both a lady _and_ exceedingly kind to her during a trying time, even if she was a bit stupid. Well, not _stupid,_ but bound by all the conventions that governed the life of women in Westeros, unable to see past those conventions and understand that some little girls did not want to learn to curtsy or have their hair plaited or wear silken gowns. But thinking of Lady Smallwood and Acorn Hall made her think of the acorn dress she had worn there, and Gendry as he had been when they were still children and still friends, and the time they spent together in the forge (and upon its floor), and how that dress had been ruined, and then her dream was back and her temper was once again foul.

 _Humph, ladies!_ the Cat thought with exasperation, but she continued to make all the appropriate noises and facial expressions as Lidia spoke. Soon, they were joined by the rest of the family, Lord Atius looking exhausted and Lady Vorena looking as serene as the cupbearer had ever seen her. The mother and father greeted their daughter with wishes for a happy nameday. Lidia was all aglow and smiled merrily as she thanked them.

"My dear, did you not sleep well?" Vorena questioned her husband as they took their usual seats. "You look pale."

"On the contrary, I slept fine," the wealthy man responded. "I feel better today than I have felt in a long while, but I do still feel a bit fatigued."

"Being ill such as you were, I imagine it will take you more than a few short days to fully recover," the lady allowed. "Still, a nap for you this afternoon, I think. I can handle all of the final preparations for the feast without you."

Biro eyed his cupbearer insidiously, saying, "Yes, a nap. You are wise my dear. I will want _all_ of my vigor tonight. For the _feast._ "

Mattine a _gain_ applied considerable concentration in an effort to _not_ make disgusted noises and glare at the wealthy man. Fortunately, Lady Vorena and her children did not seem to detect any double meaning in Lord Atius's words and, once he had declared his intent to nap, he was not acknowledged again by his family for the remainder of the meal.

Soon, Lady Vorena and her daughter were engaged in a lively discussion of the festivities to come and left the small hall together, intending to make their rounds of the manse, ensuring all of their various orders were being carried out properly. Biro asked Mattine to bring some wine to his solar for him as he departed the small hall and the girl rushed to oblige, needing to complete her duties so that she could free herself at the appointed time for her meeting with her brother. The Bear had a very important _package_ for her.

The Faceless cupbearer carried the flagon of wine to Atius Biro's solar and as she was about to pour him a cup, she heard him call from his desk, "The pewter will be fine, Mattine. I do not think _either_ of us could stand to lose another glass goblet."

Biro spoke his words without so much as a glance at his cupbearer's bandaged hand.

"Yes, my lord," the girl replied meekly, pouring the wine into the requested vessel. _Though you ought to enjoy your pretty things while you still can,_ the Cat thought. But then, that was the way with the wealthy men of the world, wasn't it? They did not appreciate all that they had, never thinking that there might come a time when they would have to do without their luxuries and finery and priceless possessions. Even she had not been immune to taking _things_ for granted as the daughter of a great nobleman of the North. She had always had enough to eat, always had furs to keep her warm and a soft pillow upon which to lay her head. She had enjoyed the love of her family, the rough play with her wolf and her brothers, and the fond tolerance of her wild ways by father's men and the servants (well, all except for the septa. The girl did not recall much indulgence from Septa Mordane). She had not truly understood what it was to _lack_ until she had left the Red Keep and trudged through dark, underground passageways and sewers, emerging into the light and a new reality. Killing rats and pigeons so that she would not starve, and sometimes, starving anyway, had taught her that little stood between a man's fragile body and his death. _This_ bit of food and water, _that_ sharp blade; _this_ whispered name, _that_ desperate prayer; _this_ cowardly king, _that_ slighted old lord... A man (or woman) could be fine and fit one minute and food for crows and worms the next. Sometimes as little as scattered wits or a poor choice was all that it took for a man to become a corpse.

_Focus and concentration, indeed._

_Life is fleeting. It is best to remember that and live accordingly,_ she thought, and she meant her words as a silent reminder for the doomed man she pretended to serve, but her little voice seized upon her thoughts and used them to taunt her.

 _Life_ is _fleeting,_ the voice agreed. _Why, then, do you insist on wasting your time? He is a Faceless assassin with missions that call him to distant lands. He lives with the constant threat of death. How long do you really suppose that he will be within your reach?_

 _He is not within my reach now,_ the girl refuted. _Jaqen does not feel what I feel._

 _How do you know what he feels?_ her voice scolded. _You have not asked him. You cannot read him. You do not know._

 _I_ do _know! I know because... because I am_ me _and he is..._

Here, she lifted Mattine's doe-eyes toward the ceiling of Lord Atius' solar, as if avoiding the chore of completing her thought; as if she could flee from _herself_ and not be forced to face the doubts that plagued her, or endure the unrealistically optimistic haranguing of her little voice that sought to fill her with cruel longing and merciless desire when she knew... she _knew_ she could not hope to have him.

 _He is all that I could ever want, and more than I can ever hope to have,_ she finished.

 _You ought to enjoy your pretty things while you still can,_ her little voice mocked.

* * *

Willem the Bear strode into the inn well before the midday meal would be served, hoping to find it quiet then. He wished to have a few moments alone with Olive before he would need to make his trek to Atius Biro's house in order to meet his sister as he had promised to do when she was last in his chamber ( _and first in his chamber as well,_ he thought with an amused grin). When his eyes had adjusted to the dim light of the common room, he spotted the wench across a far-away table, cleaning as she chatted with young Syrio. The Lyseni did not know what his sister had planned for the tyke, but she had said she would have need of the little pot boy and so the Bear would make sure that he arrived at the manse at the appointed time with the boy in tow.

" _Willem!_ " Olive cried delightedly when she finally looked up from her task and saw her lover standing in front of the doors. The girl made her bouncing way across the room and carelessly threw her arms around the Faceless apprentice.

"Hello, my sweet," the boy greeted and his voice sounded a bit hoarse to the serving girl's ear.

"I missed you, Willem," she whispered back, pecking his cheek quickly and then dropping her arms and placing her hands on her hips. It was her _scolding_ stance. "And just where were you yesterday? I have a bolt that has still not been repaired! Though to be honest, it seems to be working just fine now."

"That's because I already fixed it," the boy lied, and then, dropping his voice low, leaned down and added, "when you were sleeping, after… well, _after_."

Olive blushed prettily and said she had best finish up her work before Staaviros skinned her (the boy knew it was merely Olive's tendency toward exaggeration flavoring her words, as Staaviros had always struck the acolyte as a gentle man, and not prone to fits of violence).

"Wait for me, Willem. After I finish up in a bit, we can have a walk around the Moon Pool."

"I'd rather walk to your bedchamber," he smirked at her, but in truth, he did not think they would have much have time for such an adventure just then with Olive needing to finish up her work. He just liked the way she squealed and blushed when he said it.

Perhaps a quarter of an hour passed before the wench was free of her duties for a moment, and she linked arms with the handsome young man, smiling adoringly at him as he walked with her out of the inn and into the street, bound for the Moon Pool. He would have agreed to walk with Olive anywhere she desired just then, but the particular location she had chosen held memories of some significance for him, so he found it somewhat distracting.

"What are you thinking about, my love?" the girl asked him sweetly, gazing up at his square jaw, thinking that he was really quite comely.

 _At least as comely as the new Mattine's handsome merchant, and not so old,_ the tavern girl quipped to herself.

"I was just thinking about all of the duels that have happened here," he replied somewhat truthfully. "It seems that _Bravos_ are always dying around this pool."

"There are consequences to foolish behavior," Olive sniffed.

 _Indeed,_ the boy thought. _I have a feeling the Cat would say the same about our behavior._

"Are you saying you wouldn't love me if I were a dueling _Bravo_?" the Bear teased.

"I love you despite your faults," the girl replied, and then added rather slyly, "and dueling is the least of your sins, I'd say."

He wasn't sure what to make of that remark. Dueling certainly _was_ the least of his sins, considering that his _sins_ included a rather sizable list of people to whom he had delivered a particular gift _and_ the fact that he planned to make a life out of just such endeavors. Besides that, he had only ever been in one _true_ duel, and had to be saved by his sister from certain death during it. But Olive didn't know about any of that.

_Did she?_

After brief consideration of the question, the Bear decided that it was impossible and so continued his banter in a lighthearted way. It was the manner of a man in love.

"Well, for your part, you have no faults, Olive," the imposing Lyseni sighed. "As far as I can see, you are perfect."

The girl laughed at him but leaned in closer to him at his sweet words.

"I'll wager you say that to every girl who lets you _slip past her bolt_."

The Lyseni looked at Olive seriously and told her that there had ever only been one girl, and it was _her_.

"Well, _that_ explains it, then," she teased. "You think you're in love because you don't know any better!"

He read in her japing the underlying insecurity and the question she wanted him to answer. He obliged her. It was easy, because it was the truth.

"I think I'm in love with you because I _am_ in love with you," the Bear countered. "There is only you, Olive. And there only ever will be."

When he said it, he felt a little sad, because it was true and because there wasn't anything he could do about it. He could not see his way to abandoning the order, which comprised the only life he knew now. But he could not see his way to abandoning Olive, either. And just then, a mad plan began to form in his head. The Cat would scream at him if he told her of it. His master would probably skin him alive, and _that_ was no tendency toward exaggeration talking. And the principal elder… The Bear shuddered to think of _his_ reaction, but somehow, he did not think his body would ever be found, much less that he would climb out of the canal alive as the Cat had done. But maybe… if they were careful… and if Olive didn't mind waiting between assignments… perhaps it could work. But he had his trial to get through first and his vows to take before he could introduce the idea to his love. And so he bent to kiss her, not caring who saw, and then told her that Mattine would have need of Syrio's service at the manse later and he had come to escort the boy.

At the mention of the feast, Olive face fell and Willem asked her what was wrong.

" _You're_ going tonight, aren't you?" she pouted. " _Lidia_ invited you."

He detected the jealousy in her voice, and he felt helpless. He did not want Olive to feel hurt but he felt he should be at the manse, just in case his sister had need of his aid. It was her assignment and he had no doubt that she could handle it on her own, but it was an exceedingly important assignment (hadn't the principal elder and his own master impressed that upon him often enough of late?) and if something _should_ go wrong, he would not be able to forgive himself if the Cat came to harm and he was not there to prevent it.

"I am going tonight," the Bear agreed in a calm voice, "but not to see Lidia."

He had hoped the knowledge would soothe her, but it seemed to bring a worried furrow to her brow.

"You're going for _Mattine_ , aren't you?" Olive asked and her voice was flat, all of its characteristic lilt and laughter gone. "What is your attachment to her, Willem? I have never asked."

The Bear couldn't be sure what the Cat had or had not told the tavern wench about their relationship and he did not wish to get trapped in a lie, so he simply told Olive that he owed Mattine a debt. It was as much truth as he could safely reveal to her and when she pressed him on it further, he steadfastly refused to say more. He could hear the suspicion in the girl's voice and he began to wonder if he had made a mistake in coming to see her before the feast.

 _Perhaps it would have been wiser to wait,_ he mused.

"Willem, I know about Mattine," she told the acolyte softly. "I know why she's in Lord Atius' household."

The Lyseni was taken aback by the revelation and stopped by the lip of the Moon Pool, in nearly the exact same spot where Orbelo had fallen, having had his spine severed by the Cat's throwing blade.

"And now you say _you_ are going to the feast and you will not deny that Mattine is the _reason_ you are going…"

The boy watched as the bouncing servant girl, usually so flirtatious and lighthearted, became as staid and serious as he had ever seen her. She laid out all of the pieces of the puzzle she had held onto for days, one by one, trying to complete the picture so that she might understand what sort of danger the situation posed to the man she loved.

"Mattine has a… _debt of her own_ to pay, and she promised Syrio she _would take care_ of Biro. You are attached to Mattine, through your _own_ debt, you say. You have accepted an invitation to celebrate the nameday of a girl you met only once, and this feast just so happens to be in the same household where Mattine is serving…"

"Olive, what are you saying?"

"I'm not _saying_ anything, _Willem,_ " Olive replied and her voice had a slightly hysterical edge to it. The Bear misliked the way the girl said _Willem,_ as well; she pronounced it as if she knew the name to be a false one.

The boy raised his eyebrows at the wench, a gesture that implied he awaited her words anxiously.

"I'm _asking_ ," the girl continued, a bit more calmly. "I'm asking if you're going to put yourself in danger tonight. _For her_."

"Oh, sweet Olive," the Lyseni sighed, pulling the girl to his chest and embracing her.

"I'm _asking_ if you're going to come back to me once this is all done," the girl said, her voice muffled by his tunic. "I'm _asking_ if you will be careful."

"Let's go back to your chamber," the boy said. The discussion had taken far too serious a turn to have out by the Moon Pool, where any ears might hear and any eyes might see.

The Bear walked arm-in-arm with Olive through the doors of the inn and into the common room. There was no one there save a lone patron in the far corner drinking a mug of ale and Will, Staaviros' some-time errand boy and helper. The jolly boy gave the two a crooked smile as they entered but then set about his sweeping without a word to them. The large acolyte led Olive up the stairs to her cell, unaware that another pair of eyes watched his movements. He opened the door for her, allowing her to enter ahead of him.

"Olive," the earnest boy began, "I wish for you to be easy and not fret. There is no danger to me. None at all."

"If it's not dangerous, why do you need to be there?"

"You said you know about Mattine," the Bear reminded her, ignoring her question. "What did you mean?"

Olive sighed and bade her lover to sit down. When the Bear had settled himself on her bed, she told him of her friendship with Mattine (the _real_ Mattine) and how when someone wearing Mattine's face showed up at the inn and did not display any recognition of her, she understood what that must mean.

"This _is_ Braavos, after all," the wench said, giving her lover a meaningful look.

When Mattine first went missing, she had thought that the distraught girl must have tossed herself into the bay and drowned, but when the false Mattine had shown up, Olive had recalled her friend rambling about making a bargain with the secretive order that operated in the city with near impunity. The wench related how she had played ignorant for a while, trying to discover what the false Mattine's intentions were. When it became obvious to her that the cook was there to carry out the last wishes of Hellind's sister (who also happened to be Olive's closest friend), the tavern girl opened up to the imposter about her relationship with the real Mattine.

"Why are you telling me this, Olive?" the boy asked her and his voice was filled with dread.

" _Willem_ ," the girl breathed, sinking to her knees before him and laying her head on his lap, "I know this false Mattine must be a Faceless Man. Nothing else makes sense. And you two are so close… I have tried to understand how you could be friends without your being involved with the House of Black and White, and I nearly had myself convinced… until _now_. If you are putting yourself in danger for her, it can only mean that you are also…"

She did not finish her thought, but instead looked up at the boy with tears in her eyes. The Bear had dropped his head as his lover laid out her accusations. His mind was whirling, trying to think of a way out of this… a way to keep Olive from drawing the attention of the order. He knew as well as anyone how _dangerous_ it was to be noticed by the Faceless Men. Some of his own assignments had been meant specifically to deal with just such circumstances. There was such a thing as _knowing too much_.

He absently swiped at her tears with his thumbs and moaned, "Olive, Olive, how am I to keep you safe?"

The wench seemed surprised. _Willem_ had as much as admitted she was right. She had not expected that. _Mattine_ had merely warned her to be careful and not raise the ire of the Faceless Men by discussing their secretive business, but the cook had never admitted that Olive was right in her assertions.

"Oh, Willem, what threat am I to anyone? It's _you_ I'm worried about!"

"Listen, Olive… I was going to talk to you about this after… after _tonight._ But I think I have a way for us… I think I might have a way we can be _together,_ but I need for you to be _smart._ I need for you to be _careful._ The order… they would not like that you know what you know."

"If Mattine hasn't already told them," the plump girl laughed bitterly.

"She would _never_ ," the Bear insisted.

"Then _you_ don't tell them and we'll be fine!"

"Olive, please, just don't say _anything_ to _anyone._ "

The Bear's expression was so worried just then, that the wench had to laugh through her tears. _Some Faceless Man,_ she thought, smiling a little sadly.

"Willem, you _do_ love me, don't you? You wouldn't play me false, would you? Because what I feel…"

"Olive, how can you even ask that?" he interrupted, his voice sharp. "If only you knew how I've struggled and worried…"

The Lyseni scrubbed at his face with his hands, trying to clear his head; trying to think without his emotions getting the best of him, as his master had taught him; the master who sat in a darkened corner of the common room of the inn at that very moment, though neither the wench nor the Bear had noticed him enough to discern his identity.

"I _knew_ it," she assured him. "I just wanted to hear you say it. I _knew_ it was real. I could feel that it was real."

Despite everything, the girl's words filled the apprentice's heart with an unreasonable joy. He smiled his silly smile at her and pulled her up into his lap.

"Make no mistake, Olive, this is dangerous," the boy told her and she nodded seriously at him but he could tell she was only humoring him. "It _is_ , for _both_ of us! I want you to stay in the inn. Go _nowhere._ Do not speak of _any_ of this, to _anyone._ I'll come back here tonight and I'll tell you my plan…"

Her kiss interrupted his stern speech and he started to push her away, but her warm and pliant lips won him over and he gave into her with a groan, sagging almost helplessly against her until he was filled with a sudden vigor. The Lyseni apprentice slipped his hands forcefully beneath the loose neckline of Olive's bodice and yanked it downward. It was her turn to groan as he flipped her over onto her mattress, his errand and purpose for being at the inn momentarily forgotten.

Later, and true to his word, the Bear delivered the little Braavosi boy to an impatiently waiting cupbearer, just a little more than half an hour past the appointed time. His sister scowled at him when she saw his sheepish look, because she knew _very well_ what had put such a look on his face.

 _Honestly, it's as if he is purposefully seeking out trouble,_ the Cat thought as she shook her head in disbelief. She vowed to chastise her brother later, but for now, she simply took little Syrio by his hand, leading him away so that she could explain what would be expected of him once he had passed over the threshold of his father's house. Before Mattine reentered the manse, she spared an over-the-shoulder glance for the Bear. Her look carried with it the promise of a grim lecture, but the Lyseni did not begrudge his sister her vexation because he knew it was born of her tender feelings for him, even if she would deny it until her dying day. He was surprised at how much he appreciated her concern for him; it made him feel _worthy_ , a sentiment he was not accustomed to but one found he liked very much.

The Bear's sheepish look melted away and was replaced with an affectionate smile. His sister looked surprised to see it but just shook her head again and sighed as she disappeared into the manse with Syrio.

* * *

The Kindly Man and the Lorathi master were among those in the order who were dining on Umma's noonday fare in the small dining room of the House of Black and White. Several of the masters and priests were absent, as were some of the acolytes, but a man's sister was present. _The waif_ , as the Cat's master was coming to think of her, thanks to his lovely girl's insistence on _naming_ everyone. He supposed he should be thankful she had named him _Jaqen H'ghar,_ for otherwise, he might have been forced to constantly endure being referred to as "the foreign-sounding man" or "the sarcastic man" or some other trait singled out by a man's little Cat (the Cat, too, had thought on this topic during some of her less-structured moments in the temple and had settled on just such a name, dubbing Jaqen _the lovely man_ long ago, though she never told her master this, of course).

 _The lordling_ was also present, as well as a smattering of the younger acolytes, including Loric, who had recently lost his eyes. Jaqen mused that his lovely girl would probably be interested to know that. His eyes narrowed just a bit at the observation as he realized that he was starting to think of his apprentice's reactions to every small thing he encountered and every bit of news he learned. He really was allowing his focus to slip and must try harder to subdue this preoccupation. It was _unseemly_ and not in keeping with his years and years of careful control.

"What troubles you, brother?" the principal elder asked in a quiet voice, leaning close to Jaqen's ear. The Kindly Man had noted his former apprentice's subtle change in expression.

"Nothing of consequence," the Lorathi replied quickly. "A man finds he has too much time on his hands with his apprentice away on a mission and the Westerosi boy's training completed."

"How interesting that you should remark upon it," the elder said mildly. "I had planned to speak to you after the meal about a task."

"Oh?"

"Yes. Let us walk in the garden. The weather is so pleasant today."

The Kindly Man wiped his mouth fastidiously with his napkin and then dropped it on the table, rising from his seat as the masters and acolytes hailed him with a murmured chorus of "Valar morghulis." The elder nodded, speaking the companion phrase as he and his former apprentice left the hall and made their way through the dim temple, bound for the garden.

The pair walked for a time in silence, as was their custom. Then, as usual, it was the principal elder who broke the lull.

"I understand Atius Biro's daughter will be betrothed to the Sealord's son tonight."

"Just so," the Lorathi agreed amiably. "There is a feast to mark the occasion."

"I expect your apprentice will have a hand in determining the _success_ of this event."

"A man believes you are correct."

"After that, she will return to the temple, I imagine."

"A man believes you are correct in this also," Jaqen replied, his tone as bland as his master's.

"When she does, I would ask that you remember my request," the Kindly Man said with surprising directness. "I do not wish for you to have contact with her until after she says her vows."

"Is this why the principal elder has asked a man to walk and talk with him today?"

"No, I do have an important task that requires your expertise. But still, I feel this reminder is warranted. From the way the two of you have recently _defied_ my wishes in this matter, I can only assume that neither of you realized the seriousness with which the request was meant."

The two grew quiet for a moment as they continued strolling past the fountain. Jaqen drew in a breath and then spoke.

"The temple is not so grand and spacious as the Sealord's palace," the Lorathi assassin pointed out. "If a man and a girl are within the walls at the same time, they are bound to see one another."

"Are they then bound to embrace? Is there an obligation for them to have meaningful conversation and then engage in the sort of quarreling which marks the interactions of lovers?"

The younger man put his finger to his lips in a thoughtful gesture, as if he were considering something. The elder glanced at him and thought he knew what the Lorathi was wondering: _how._ The Kindly Man gave a small, mirthless laugh.

"Brother, all that passes within these walls is known to me. Having spent your whole life here, you understand this perhaps better than most and yet you _willfully_ disobeyed my order anyway. You are choosing _self_ over service. You are choosing _her_ over _Him_. What has happened to you?"

"A man fails to understand his master's vehement disapproval. Nothing that has transpired violates a man's vows, and a man would not dishonor his apprentice or make it difficult for her to complete her training, yet you are more worried than a man has ever seen in all his years within these walls."

"I do not _worry,_ " the elder retorted, his tone caustic, "because I know that you will adhere to my directive _from now on_. I am _not_ worried, because I know that you will obey the will of the Many-Faced god _from now on._ I _shall not_ worry, because I know you will endeavor to protect your apprentice from the consequences of her own disobedience _from now on_."

Jaqen's expression hardened at the thinly veiled threat. The Kindly Man's own face then relaxed and the Lorathi could see the same gentle affection shining through his master's eyes that had led his lovely girl to dub the elder _the Kindly Man_ in the first place.

"Brother," the principal elder began, his voice sounding affable and caring, "there are things you do not yet understand, but you should know me well enough by now to know that I only have your best interests at heart. _And_ hers. The girl's _potential…_ Oh, brother, can you not trust in me on this?"

That was as close to pleading as Jaqen had ever heard his master sound.

"A man trusts in Him of Many Faces," the Lorathi responded carefully.

"Then we have no quarrel, brother, for I only seek to fulfill His will."

"As does a man."

"Yes, yes," the Kindly Man agreed, placing his hand on the younger man's shoulder. "You have been, and remain, a most devout servant, I have no doubt."

Jaqen's former master professed his faith in the Lorathi, but Jaqen himself was beginning to wonder if perhaps the elder was right to worry. _Duty and love_ , he thought dolefully. The warring expectations of both ideals were tearing at him and he was beginning to believe he might be losing the strength to remain faithful to his vows in the face of all the girl meant to him. He was not fool enough to believe that he could simply choose _her_ and leave his life within the order behind him without consequence but neither was he fool enough to believe he was capable of resisting his need for her forever, either.

The Lorathi stored his private struggle away for later consideration (likely to occur when he most needed to sleep) and turned his full attention to the principal elder.

"You said you had a task for a man."

"Indeed. The Lyseni acolyte is ready to earn his face, I believe."

As the Kindly Man expounded on all of his plans for the Bear's test, Jaqen felt a creeping sense of dismay. _His lovely girl was not going to like this at all._

* * *

As the sun tracked its path across the sky and the noon hour passed, it seemed as if an immense game of cyvasse was being played, but instead of carved elephants and catapults and other various miniaturized weaponry, it was _people_ _of all sorts_ being moved about a board the size of the Seven Kingdoms and Essos combined in a quest for... _victory? Supremacy? Glory? Treasure?_

No, it was nothing so _simple_ or _banal_ as all that.

Around Braavos at that very moment, seemingly disparate actions served to push and pull both the innocent and the unsuspecting as well as the calculating and the shrewd this way and that, positioning the players in such a way as to ultimately guarantee success. No one could have understood, without seeing all of the pieces put into action, what a painstakingly choreographed strategy was being played out, and all in the hopes of achieving a critical result; all building up to a single outcome so long in the making that perhaps only three people in the entirety of the world had been privileged to witness its origin; a conclusion desired passionately by three men, so different from one another, yet so alike in their unwavering determination to see their individual but interrelated objectives realized.

_But, of course, it was not so much the origin of the scheme that mattered, but the completion, especially when the stakes that had been laid in this vast game were so high, and all of their lives would be affected in the end, one way or another._

The game was being played, the strategy was unfolding, and the pieces were being moved to their proper places.

Jaqen H'ghar, the previously nameless and currently tense master assassin, moved along a familiar path toward a familiar place at the direction of the one man in all of the world whose orders he was bound by duty and faith to obey.

Willem the Bear, acolyte of the order of Faceless Men and completely besotted boy, readied himself for a great feast shortly to take place, slipping a dagger into his boot to have at his disposal _in the unlikely event that his sister had need of his help._

Atius Biro, second wealthiest man in all of Braavos and lecher of the first order, alternated between drinking tea and wine brought to him by his _charming_ cupbearer and imagining what debauchery he would perpetrate upon that same cupbearer later that evening.

The Sealord of Braavos, a man of great appetite but much greater ambition, considered the appropriate length of time a man should wait before proposing marriage to a grieving widow, all while he ate from a tray of cheeses and fruits brought to him by one of his many servants.

Owen, the personal guard to Lord Atius and lately crowned _awfully decent teacher_ , walked a path through the wealthy man's manse as if overseeing the ingress and egress of new faces but conveniently managed to map every exit a pair fleeing the scene of a murder might take in order to avoid capture, _in the unlikely event such knowledge would be required in the near future._

Olive, the popular, bouncing serving wench of one of Braavos' most reputable establishments as well as the alleged unacknowledged daughter of the second wealthiest man in the city, flitted about the inn more nervously than Will or Staaviros had ever seen her, awaiting the return of her lover, the handsome boy who had promised to tell her of his plan for their future.

Lidia Biro, a girl of six and ten and the soon-to-be betrothed of the Sealord's eldest son, bathed and giggled and primped, attended by _two_ ladies maids and overseen by her own mother who desired for everything at the upcoming feast, including her own daughter, to be _just so_.

Syrio, a charming little motherless child and purportedly the bastard son of a man much closer to his end than his beginning, washed pots and dishes while dreaming of his own small version of revenge and falling completely in love with the one who had promised it to him.

Meerios Dinast, the preeminent armorer of Braavos and proud creator of some very recently forged _works of perfection_ (if he did say so himself), polished the commissioned pieces until their gleam was so brilliant, they were hard to look upon without tears forming in his old eyes and awaited the return of the man for whom price was _of no consequence_.

The stern-faced assassin, a Faceless master burdened with a lumbering apprentice and a man with no special attachments within the walls of his temple save one, left his seat and walked through the city, positioning himself in the spot where he was most likely to encounter a certain errant acolyte who was in great need of instruction.

The Westerosi Rat, an accomplished acrobat as well as an _almost-_ Faceless Man, skulked about in his customary way, wondering both how much longer he would have to wait before he was allowed to complete the final task of his trial _and_ why he had been sent away to stew for so long before he was allowed to undertake it.

The Kindly Man, principal elder of a mysterious order of assassins and devoted servant of Him of Many Faces, moved in his unhurried way around the temple and attended to his duties in his typical serene and unaffected manner, seeming for all the world to be unaware of the fact that anything at all was set to happen that evening.

Tyto Arturis, a man with a long-standing and particular interest in a certain little girl (who was a little girl no longer) and also a man of considerable power and influence, waited patiently and watched calmly as one by one, every small plot and large intrigue he and his fellows had set in motion flowed together and combined gloriously as they barreled toward their inevitable culmination.

The Cat, the once and future Arya Stark and currently angst-ridden teenager, brewed tea, instructed her young accomplice in certain matters before delivering him to the kitchen to provide an extra pair of hands for the scrubbing of pots, and suppressed the overwhelming (and perhaps slightly _childish_ ) urge to leer menacingly at the second wealthiest man in Braavos as a countdown began in her head.

All of the players, both the willing and the unwitting, worked toward a common goal though almost none of them knew of it.

Far and away in Pentos, one old friend raised a glass to another as they watched the sun sink further in the sky while across the Narrow Sea, a dwarf with mismatched eyes whispered once again tales of silver strings and painted shields and winter roses and prophecies yet to be realized into the ear of one who would hear those tales and be stirred by them, causing amethyst eyes to burn with purpose and intention and _resolve_.

* * *

 _ **Creep-**_ Radiohead

 _ **One Thing-**_ Finger Eleven (for the Bear and Olive)

 _ **The Best of You-**_ Foo Fighters

 _ **Enter**_ _**Sandman**_ _-_ Metallica (Dreams of war, dreams of liars, Dreams of dragon's fire)


	47. Chapter 47

There was light _everywhere_ , cast by tapers, torches, and lanterns. The manse was glowing as if the sun itself had consented to leave the sky in order to accept an invitation to celebrate Lidia Biro's sixteenth nameday. Lady Vorena had even ordered the garden and lagoon to be fully lit so that if guests wished to escape the crowd or the warmth by strolling along the graveled outdoor paths or paddling around in the dainty, painted rowing boats the family kept on the bank of the lagoon, they would be able to admire the beauty of the trees and plants even if the night proved cloudy and moonless (a possibility that did not, in fact, come to pass). The effect of all that flickering flame was spectacular to behold, both outdoors and in, and the Cat thought how strange it was that _this_ twinkling fantasy should be the scene of such a gruesome death.

_How strange. And how wonderful._

The guests arrived, attired in all of their gorgeous finery, with faces radiant and almost as bright as the surrounding lanterns. They wandered through the manse, greeting one another with the assured familiarity of the affluent. In ones and twos, they approached the Lord and Lady Biro as well as their beautiful, blushing daughter to offer their congratulations and well-wishes on the girl's sixteenth nameday before enjoying a cup of wine or other beverage. The feast was set to begin shortly, but first, those invited were bound by courtesy and convention to attend to the ritual of the receiving line and then move through the large house, appreciating all of the things displayed within the manse that hinted at the wealth and power wielded by Atius Biro; things such a such as the tapestries and plush, colorful carpets and heavy silver candlesticks and carvings made of rare woods and studded with precious stones; evidence of the great riches amassed by way of Biro's mastery of shrewd dealings and his wise investment of the dowry he received when he married Vorena.

Mattine drifted slowly among the crowd, pausing occasionally to pour wine and then offer the drinks to the guests nearest to her so she might appear to have a purpose for her proximity. Mostly, though, she kept Lord Atius in her view, ever the hungry wolf, quietly stalking her prey. As she circled, the apprentice spotted her Lyseni brother far down the long corridor, engaging in the gauntlet of the receiving line, stopping to chat with Lidia after he smoothly placed a kiss upon the smiling girl's knuckles. The Cat thought that the Bear looked rather handsome just then. Well, at least at the distance from which she was viewing him, his hair appeared _brushed_ and he had no visible dirt on him. But his sister could tell that apart from basic grooming, he had also found some clothes that fit his large, muscular frame rather nicely (the storage vaults below the temple were quite handy for just such things) and showed his physique to its best advantage (was that why Lidia appeared to be _giggling_ as the boy spoke to her? Oh, how Olive would _rail! If_ the Bear hadn't already broken with the serving wench. It was possible, after his late-night conversation with the Cat in his bedchamber, that the boy had already done the right thing. _The smart thing._ ) The cupbearer moved in for a closer look.

The Westerosi acolyte admired the way the her brother's pale buckskin breeches outlined his hip and rose up his hard belly, and she was suddenly struck by an awareness of his appeal, seeing in him what it was that made the serving wench _and_ the wealthy man's daughter fairly _swoon_ at just his lightest touch and his smile. Though he was supposedly playing the role of a well-off citizen of one of the Free Cities, the Bear was attired in a decidedly western fashion (which perhaps was more appropriate, considering he had adopted the name _Willem_. She supposed he could claim his attire was homage to his non-existent Westerosi father). The boy wore a fitted blouse of very fine, white linen with a high collar which sported a simple, elegant upright ruffle that rested just under his square jaw. Over that, he had placed a sleeveless doublet of deep scarlet and black silk brocade which stretched over his broad chest and tapered at the waist. The rich garment was held closed by golden clasps, which served as the Lyseni boy's only ornamentation. His boots were tall, black, and polished to gleaming, and the dark leather rose up to meet the buttons at the bottom of each leg of his breeches in a contrast of dark and light. The effect was... _most pleasing to her eye._ The Cat had never had any use for fashion, save for picking the proper attire to lend credence to whatever faceless identity she was portraying a the time, but the Bear nearly took her breath away and even as untutored as she was in the art of dressing oneself well, she knew her brother was arrayed in such a way as to draw more than his fair share of admiring looks and appreciative smiles.

_She was certainly throwing some of those his way as well._

She only did it as part of her _Mattine_ disguise, she told herself. A simple cupbearer would not be more likely to resist a comely man's charms than the rest of the women present. Because it was expected, gawking was _proper._ Gawking was an _appropriate response_. Not to gawk might be considered _suspicious_ , and such a slip could possibly even give her away as Faceless...

 _Yes, that is what I will say if he asks why I am looking at him like this,_ the Faceless cupbearer decided, trying (and failing) to move her eyes from the Bear and back to Biro.

Before tonight, the Cat would not have said that her brother was _unattractive,_ but the truth was, she typically did not notice such things. _Well, she had noticed that the handsome man was usually very handsome, but that was more a statement of fact than any sort of expression of preference or judgment. Just as well say a bald man was bald or a Summer Islander was dark. It was mere observation of fact, not admission of attraction._ And, Jaqen... _Well, that was different. She supposed a girl's gut was supposed to twist and clench and her heart was supposed to pound and race when admiring the physique or countenance of the one she loved. But beyond even all that, her master was simply..._

 _Too pretty by half?_ her little voice suggested.

 _Ruggedly handsome! Ruggedly handsome!_ she countered. _Oh! Stop it! There is an important task to be accomplished!_

The Cat continued to reproach herself for her inability to attend to the matter at hand with what she deemed to be an appropriate degree of vigilance. She could not fathom what had rendered her so incapable of rapt attention at that moment and her lack of understanding was making her cross. Again, the girl blamed the Bear for her distraction, but she felt less desire to punch his face than she had on previous occasions when he had managed to pull her thoughts away from her mission. She supposed the boy hadn't _meant_ to interfere with her assignment, but still, if he hadn't arrived looking notably finer than any man she had ever seen in the Westerosi court (save, perhaps, Jaime Lannister, but she chose to ignore the lion's usually _fine_ appearance just then in favor of curling her lip contemptuously as he crossed her mind), she would have been better able to concentrate. If the Lyseni didn't have that _body,_ shaped and chiseled by all his years of hacking at both straw dummies and his brother Rat with his greatsword and displayed perfectly by his superb choice of attire, she wouldn't be having such a hard time keeping her mind on what was important just then.

Ending Biro.

_Stupid Bear with your stupid muscles and hard belly. This is definitely your fault. Why are you even here? I only needed you to bring me Syrio, not show up to the party and command all the attention the ladies could give you. And certainly not to make me think of you and Jaqen when I ought to be thinking of other things._

"Focus and concentration," the girl heard, the words spoken as a warm whisper in her ear. She spent a childish second wishing that the handsome man's voice was merely in her own head, simply a memory called up in self-admonishment, but the shiver that shot down her neck and seized her bare shoulders as his breath tickled her flesh told her otherwise.

"I _am_ concentrating," the Cat murmured faintly, not turning to look at the Faceless sellsword. He was standing so close to her back that her body was instantly warmed by his very _nearness_.

"Yes, but on the wrong thing," Owen replied, and she could _feel_ the smirk on his lips even though she could not see his face. "What would your master say, little wolf?"

 _Yes,_ her little voice piled on, _what would pretty, pretty Jaqen say?_

Panic gripped her for a brief moment as she considered what Jaqen would say if he knew what thoughts occupied her mind and distracted her just then, but she stuffed it down as quickly as she could, lest the Faceless master sense her fear and exploit it.

_The handsome man was so very good at exploiting... things._

"Are you jealous, Owen?" Mattine sneered quietly, deciding to launch her own offensive while her back was still turned to him. She perceived that he moved even closer to her and some part of him ( _his knee?_ ) seemed to barely brush against the flowing, fine material of her skirts at the midpoint of her thigh.

"I leave jealousy for... _other_ men," the assassin said, and his voice had a quality that suggested there was more to his words than might be evident at first. Before the Cat could conjure an appropriate retort, however, he was gone.

Mattine moved away as well, circulating in a seemingly aimless manner but all of her movements drew her closer to her brother. She finally approached him, offering a cup of wine to him as she did, their interaction one of a dozen playing out across the wide corridor and spilling into the great hall in exactly the same way; she was merely a servant _serving_. In this way, she was able to avoid suspicion as a cupbearer speaking to an invited guest.

"You look _beautiful_ ," the Cat told her brother in low tones as she handed him the goblet. Her voice sounded more _surprised_ than complimentary, however, something the Bear noted with chagrin. A blush crept up his neck nonetheless, and it made him glad of his high collar, which he thought probably hid the outward signs of his embarrassment reasonably well.

"Thank you," he nearly stammered, taking a sip of wine to calm the sudden painful prickling of his nerves. "I... I have something important to do after this. I wanted to look my best." He wasn't sure what was distressing him more: his gnawing concern for Olive's well-being or his concern for himself at having to explain to the serving girl what it was that he wanted from her.

 _Will she slap me? Or will she be thrilled with the prospect?_ the large acolyte wondered. _I hope she's thrilled. She'll probably slap me, though, and call me selfish._

"You wanted to look your best?" the girl repeated in a confused tone. "Well… excellent job. I've never seen you look better. Unless you count your _Bravo_ disguise. That was truly something... _special._ "

The Bear snorted slightly, then retorted, "As I recall, I've never seen _you_ dressed quite so well, either."

"Yes, well, I ought to be grateful you at least gave me a reason to get rid of that awful head scarf, though _bleeding_ all over it was perhaps a bit of an extreme reaction to it," the Cat japed, then a look of understanding crossed her face as she replayed something her brother had just said. "Wait… are you going to see Olive after this?"

The boy looked as if he was bracing for a tirade but made his sister no answer. That was all the admission she needed.

" _Bear!_ " she hissed softly, and then realized that this was the second time that night that she had wanted to yell at a Faceless Man but was unable to do so without drawing unwanted attention. _And the guests haven't even been seated yet,_ the Cat whined internally. _I swear to all the gods, if I can just make it through the night, I'll throttle both the Bear_ and _the handsome man once I get them alone in the temple!_

" _Mattine_ ," the Lyseni interrupted and his voice was firm. She was quite sure she had never heard him speak to her in that tone before. "I can't. Just... _don't_. Not now."

The Cat suppressed her urge to clout him in front of Lord Atius' guests and pressed her lips tightly together, giving him a curt nod that said, _Okay, I won't_ but then added with her narrowed eyes, _but later, you'll pay for that._ Her brother saw her shake her head very slightly at him, and then she took a half-step closer to him and quickly pressed something into his free hand; the one which was not cradling his goblet of wine.

"What's this?" he asked, not looking at the objects, but feeling them. They were small and felt cool and smooth in his palm.

"Things I don't want to get caught holding."

"You'll not be caught," the Bear said quickly, looking around the room casually as if they were not even speaking to one another.

"I know... but just in case..."

" _You won't be caught_ ," the boy insisted, sparing a quick glance into his sister's false brown eyes. "Now, what are they?"

"There is a nearly full vial of Sweetsleep. If you make it back to the temple before me, just replace it in the waif's stores. Sit it in the front, though, so I can label it properly," she requested. The vial was actually half-full of significantly diluted Sweetsleep, but she had not found the means to note the adulterated strength anywhere on the container while in the manse. As it was her only portion of the stuff in the manse and she knew its concentration, the lack of labeling was not a problem for the Cat. It would become more important later, though, to prevent the weaker potion from being confused with its more potent counterpart, and the waif had ways to etch such information into the glass of the vials. "The other nearly empty vial is Cat Gut."

"Cat Gut?"

"I'll explain later. Just put them in your pocket and don't forget about them. I'd hate for the laundresses to get ahold of them and cause themselves some harm."

 _Of course, with the way they snoop and gossip, maybe I should start to leave Tears of Lys in my pockets more often,_ she thought, her mind going back to a certain embarrassing morning in a certain corridor as she emerged from a certain pretty assassin's bedchamber wearing only his favorite blouse and leaving behind the bloody evidence of an alleged moral lapse that had not actually occurred.

 _For the love of all the gods... He is_ not _pretty!_

With a subtle nod of the acknowledgment of her directions, the large Lyseni left his sister and made his way to the great hall, where the guests seemed to have begun migrating as the hired musicians began to play, signaling the start of the feast.

 _Time to put an end to all this_ , Mattine thought. She glanced around at the assembled revelers and fought hard to keep the Cat's malicious smile in check as the grains of sand which filled the hourglass in her head finally ran out.

* * *

Because it was a celebration and because the wealthy man had spent a significant number of days deprived of the things he would normally eat and drink, the cupbearer felt certain that Lord Atius' wine intake would be significant that night. She did not feel pressured, therefore, to alter his first two cups in any way and the man seemed to be growing increasingly jolly as he drained his second cup. To his third cup, however, Mattine added a bit of the contents of her secreted pouch. The stuff did not dissolve but the particles were fine enough that they were suspended with an even distribution in the ruby libation. Besides, Biro was affected enough by his rapid ingestion of his previous drinks on a relatively empty stomach that he did not seem to notice the addition. This emboldened the Cat, and so she added _more_ of the particles to the fourth goblet. She stood behind Biro as she did this, her body and her actions hidden from the feasting guests by the wealthy man's chair, but another servant stood behind the head table with the cupbearer and the annoying girl kept looking at Mattine for some reason. In her impatience, the Cat finally just pushed the girl away with her... _whatever it was,_ rather than waiting for a more opportune time to alter Biro's wine.

 _Look away,_ the apprentice commanded, her thought seeming to behave as if it were a hand reaching out from her own head and gently pushing the girl's face to turn in the opposite direction. As the Cat willed the change in another's actions, the servant girl appeared to be distracted by something behind her and turned around to see what it was. Rolling her eyes, the Faceless cupbearer sprinkled more of her powder into the wealthy man's cup. By this time, the meal had progressed past several courses and Biro rose to speak to the assembly, taking his goblet from Mattine and lifting it high.

"Honored guests!" he cried, appearing only slightly unsteady on his feet. "I hope you will join me in wishing my only daughter a merry nameday!"

The Cat grimaced at his words, thinking, _Not your_ only _daughter, my lord._

Cheers and clapping erupted in the hall and Lidia smiled her dimpled smile, looking so much like Olive as she did, the acolyte glanced into the crowd to search out the Bear's face, wondering if he was affected by the resemblance between the siblings. She could not find her brother among the guests, however. _Maybe he stepped out for a moment,_ the girl reasoned, mentally shrugging.

"On this occasion, it is also my great pleasure to announce more happy news!" Biro declared, turning to his right and nodding his head deferentially at the Sealord, who was seated at the high table with the family along with the son that Lidia was to marry. The Sealord gave a slight smile and nodded back at Biro, who continued. "My esteemed guest, his excellency, the Sealord of Braavos and I wish to share with you all the news of the betrothal of my lovely Lidia to his eldest son, Luca."

Here, the cheers intensified and the expected rounds of toasts commenced. This required a significant amount of refilling of goblets and soon, the Cat's powder supply was gone. The final course was brought in and the raucous crowd laughed and ate and began dancing as the tempo of the music picked up. After a few quick calculations in her head, the Cat decided it was time, and so Mattine leaned down to whisper something into Biro's ear. The man could be seen to grin widely and then nod. Shortly after that, the cupbearer left her post behind her master and made her way out of the great hall and across the long corridor to a parlor chamber meant to be used as a retreat for guests who needed to escape the festivities of the hall and rest in quiet for a few moments. It was furnished with comfortable chairs and a long, low couch and had a tall cabinet with twin doors which might normally serve as a wardrobe for holding cloaks but today served as a hiding place for little Syrio.

"Come out," Mattine whispered and the door of the cupboard swung open slowly. The dark-headed pot boy stepped out, grinning.

"Hi, Mattine," Syrio greeted shyly.

"Hello, my lamb," Mattine said.

The boy looked at the cupbearer expectantly, awaiting her instruction.

"He'll be here in a few minutes, Syrio," the girl warned briskly. "Take off your clothes."

The boy's part had been explained to him earlier, so this command was not unexpected, and he was still young enough to be shameless, so he shed his clothes quickly in a pile at his feet.

"Good," the Cat said simply. "Now, come here."

The boy approached Mattine as she knelt on the floor, facing him. When he stood in front of her, she asked him to hit her.

"Do I have to?" Syrio asked in a voice that approached a whine.

"I won't be mad, sweetling. I already told you, this is part of the game."

"But I don't want to hurt you."

"Oh, you can't hurt me, Syrio. But I need you to be as strong as you can!" the cupbearer encouraged.

"Okay, if you're sure..."

"I am. The harder, the better."

The girl barely had time to get the words out when Syrio's balled up fist struck her in the mouth. _Gods, that hurt! That little rogue is strong!_ she thought as her lip began to ooze a little.

"You're bleeding, Mattine!" the boy cried.

"Good," she reassured him. "That means you did it right. Do you think you can do it again?"

"It hurt my hand a little," he revealed.

"I need for you to be tough. Can you be tough? For me?"

He nodded, his eyes wide and serious.

"Good. Go ahead."

Another crack across her eye seemed to hit its mark and within a minute, the abraded flesh beneath one eyebrow and the upper eyelid below it began to redden and swell.

"That's good, Syrio," the Cat said, sucking in a breath. _That stings!_ "You can sit down over there, and just wait. Don't say anything until I tell you. Do you remember what you're to do?"

The naked boy indicated he did and she gave him a smile.

"It shouldn't be much longer," Mattine assured him when he had settled in his chair and as soon as she was done speaking, Biro burst into the room, calling out her name.

"There you are, pigeon!" the wealthy man cried drunkenly when he spotted the girl in the center of the room. He did not look well, but seemed to feel alright based on his enthusiasm at having located his cupbearer. He licked his lips and then spoke in a grunt, " _Finally_." His eyes were staring unsteadily at her breast and waist, which, along with the dim lighting in the room, perhaps accounted for why he did not comment on her damaged face.

"Yes," the girl agreed, her voice cold and vicious. " _Finally._ "

Biro moved unsteadily toward her but Mattine showed uncharacteristic composure and stood her ground. _By her calculation, he didn't have much longer anyway, bleeding now from a thousand thousand tiny cuts; more wounds inside of him than there were stars in the night sky._

The wealthy man lurched towards his cupbearer, stumbling the last few steps and falling heavily against her. Fortunately, the Cat was stronger than Mattine looked, and she did not buckle under his great weight but nearly flung him off when she felt his hot mouth sucking and biting at her neck greedily and without warning. She managed to still herself, though, hiding her distaste enough to tolerate the dead man's attentions, especially as she noted that they were increasingly clumsy and directionless. The lord's hands were everywhere, grabbing and pawing, pulling and urging, but his grasp was weak. He seemed to want her to walk backward with him, toward the tufted couch. The girl obliged him, moving slowly both because she was burdened partially with the man's great weight but also because she wished to delay their arrival. When their legs finally met with the edge of the low seat, the girl did her best to turn them so that the wealthy man would not fall upon her and crush her against the cushions. She succeeded and Biro dropped onto the couch, pulling Mattine down over top of him, the cupbearer's flowing skirts draped over his legs like a fine shroud as she straddled his lap.

Lord Atius resumed his pawing and his mouth returned to the girl's throat as he tugged at the triple knotting on the ribbon which held the neck of her gown tightly closed.

_Did you think I would make it so easy, my lord?_

Frustrated, Biro began to use his soft hands to tear at the material of the bodice, which gave way easily due to its delicacy, but after a few seconds, the man stopped his destructive activity with a gasp.

" _Mattine_ ," he began shakily. "You're _bleeding._ Your neck is _bleeding_."

Instinctively, the Cat put her hand to her throat and felt the sticky warmth beneath her fingers. She knew _what_ it was and she knew _whose_ it was, but she still had a few more minutes of mummery to endure, and so she could not allow herself to smirk or bark her laughter or glare hatefully at the man whose end she had been planning so carefully for so long, lest he call a guard into the chamber. And so, though she longed to be done with the grieving sister once and for all, she continued to play the part of a timid servant.

_For Hellind. For Mattine. For Syrio. For Olive._

_And to prove myself to Jaqen._

"Oh! Oh!" Mattine gasped, looking at her red fingers with wide, frightened eyes. "My lord!"

Biro made as if to speak but then coughed violently, sending a spray of blood forth which spattered Mattine's face and the front of her gown. He looked at the girl in horror and then finally noted the fresh injuries to her face. Biro's confusion was evident as his mind struggled to assimilate the wounds, the blood and his own swimming head. He still had not grasped that it was blood from his own mouth which hard marked the girl's neck and he seemed to be looking for a wound as he pressed the flesh of her neck with his smooth fingers. Finding none, he looked around, panicked, and only then noted the naked boy in a dim corner, perched in a chair.

"What… who…" he sputtered, pushing up from the couch, knocking Mattine to the side as he did. The girl landed more gracefully than she should have, rolling over the velvet cushions and coming to rest on her hip as she reclined into the soft corner of the seat. "Why is this…"

The Faceless cupbearer assessed the advancement of Biro's bleeding, noting that there was a trickle of crimson now dripping from each corner of his mouth and his nose was beginning to bleed a little, too. _Not long now._

"What is it that you are asking, my lord?" the girl wondered, her tone suddenly mocking. "Do you wish to know the truth of who this boy is, or do you wish to know what I will tell the crowd that will be pushing in here after you collapse?"

Lord Atius' brow furrowed deeply and he tried to conjure his anger at the cupbearer's tone, but found he was too light-headed to do so properly.

"Mattine," he pleaded, "help me to sit. Help me."

The assassin approached the dead man and allowed him to lean against her, his bleeding now more obvious. He wretched violently and a great gush of blood boiled out of his mouth, drenching the front of the girl's torn gown, seeping through the thin layers and feeling hot against her cool skin.

"This boy is called Syrio, my lord. _He is your son_ ," the Cat whispered, turning the flagging man gracefully and lowering him to the couch from which he had risen only moments before. "You paid an assassin to have his mother killed."

The confusion and terror on Atius' face grew as he looked into Mattine's doe-eyes. He tried to protest but could not get the words out between his heaving.

 _Blood is very irritating to the stomach,_ the girl recalled as the dead man vomited again, mostly missing her, but some of the emesis splattered her arm, painting it scarlet.

"No children," he wheezed.

"Yes, Vorena wanted you to have no other children," the apprentice agreed in an almost soothing voice, "so you killed the mothers and refused to acknowledge your issue."

_It was what she had been led to believe by Olive and it was the most logical conclusion, anyway._

"No… Mattine… I have… no…"

Biro threw his head back and groaned loudly.

It was the Cat's turn to feel confused. What was he trying to tell her? Was he actually trying to protect his precious reputation and convince her that he was the upstanding citizen that the influential and wealthy of Braavos believed him to be? Of course, she knew better. She had been in his household long enough to know of his lecherous ways and feel the sting of his violence. _Atius Biro was no Baelor the Blessed, no matter how he might plead on his deathbed._

"Mattine, fetch the healer! I… I feel…" the man rasped.

It was not the way of the Faceless Men, but then, as her master liked to remind her, the Cat was merely an _acolyte_ , and so she could not resist taunting the man a bit. Mattine's rage and sorrow at the loss of her sister and the Cat's own thirst for revenge after having endured Biro's treatment demanded satisfaction.

"My lord, do you not think this proper judgment for Hellind?" she cooed sweetly.

" _Hellind_ ," the dead man moaned softly. "I loved Hellind. Oh, my love…"

The Cat snorted.

"You have a _fine_ way of showing it, Lord Atius. First, you have her killed. _Then_ you try to rape her sister. Why did you do it? Was she carrying your child?"

"What? No," he protested weakly. "I would never... Losing Hellind..."

The girl looked at the man's stricken face and her brow furrowed. He seemed... _sincere._

Lord Atius' voice was growing more faint and he was panting, but he managed to add, "I have... no children."

"You have at least six," she corrected, laughing in his face which had taken on a ghoulish, grey color. His breathing seemed more labored now and his nosebleed had worsened, probably triggered by his violent heaving. The girl glanced quickly toward the corner, assuring herself that Syrio was alright and not too troubled by the scene playing out before him. The boy was staring at his dying father with something like _fascination_ and did not seem afraid. _Good,_ she thought, and then mused once again that the boy would make an _excellent_ Faceless Man. She wondered briefly if she could pry him from Olive's grasp in order to make that happen. Biro's weak voice took her away from her own thoughts.

"I have… _none_ ," the man insisted. "Vorena has four."

The Cat could not understand why the wealthy man was denying not just his bastards but his true-born children. She did not have time to puzzle it out, however, as Biro was wracked then with a fit of coughing and a sickly gurgling sound emanated from his throat as he began to choke. There was a frenzy of coughing and vomiting of blood mixed with choking sounds and loud groans and then the wealthy man slumped over and rolled from the couch to the ruined carpet.

The assassin quickly assessed the situation. She had an abused face, a torn dress, and a large amount of blood staining her front. A quick glance at Biro confirmed that he was well on his way to one of the Seven Hells. Syrio was sitting as still as a statue on his seat, eyes wide and mouth slightly agape. _The time had come._

"Syrio," Mattine said calmly, "do you remember what you are to do?"

The boy was snapped out of his reverie and he looked at the girl's false face with wonder, asking, "How'd you do that, Mattine?"

"Do what?" the girl asked casually.

"How did you kill Atius Biro?"

"I didn't. You were here, you saw. I didn't do anything to him," the Cat told the boy. "Everyone knows that Lord Atius has had a bleeding disorder of late."

The little pot boy was visibly disappointed at the girl's words and she found she could not tolerate that look in his eyes. So, she relented.

" _Fine_. I'll tell you later," she promised, "but there's no time now. Do you remember your part?"

"Of course! I'm not a baby, I'm six!" Syrio replied with as much scorn as he was capable of mustering.

 _Seven bloody hells, he sounds exactly like me when I was six,_ the girl thought. _He probably jumps from too high up when he's told not to as well._

"Alright, then, I'll call for help. Remember, Syrio, our lives depend on your ability to convince people…"

The boy rolled his eyes and pursed his lips in an all-too-familiar way. _He is_ too much _like me,_ the acolyte thought, giving him a little half smile. Then the Cat was buried once again beneath layers and layers of _Mattine_ as tears started to trek down her face and she began to shriek. The disheveled cupbearer threw open the door of the parlor and screamed into the passageway for help. Two guards arrived nearly instantly, standing as they were only just across the corridor by the doors leading into the great hall. One of them was _Owen,_ a most fortuitous occurrence indeed. A few guests who were near the doors or in the passageway at the time the screaming was first heard arrived shortly as well. There were more gasps and shrieks and exclamations as the gathering crowd took in the scene: a blood-covered servant in a frightened state, a naked child standing near a motionless body and crying uncontrollably ( _how did he manage to get his face that red and puffy so quickly?_ the girl wondered. _The boy has a talent_ ), and Biro himself, lying in a pool of his own blood and vomit, his breathing extremely sporadic, occurring only once every minute or so with a sickening sound many called _a death rattle._ It was evidence that he would not be long counted among the living even as his vital organs struggled to avoid succumbing to his great blood loss.

"What happened?" Owen demanded loudly, grabbing Mattine roughly by her arm. By then, more guests has pushed into the room and the corridor was beginning to fill.

"He… he…" she stammered through her tears.

Owen shook her a little, telling her gruffly to _quit her bloody wailing_ and tell him what had happened. The other guard, the one whose face Jaqen had borrowed, looked at the girl with sympathy, disapproving of Owen's rough treatment, but said nothing. Of course, Owen's _rough treatment_ served to make the whole farce more believable and so the girl did not mind, though by her increased sobbing, that would not be apparent to anyone witnessing the events as they unfolded.

One of the guests, seeing Biro's state, had obviously fetched his wife, urging her to come quickly as something had happened to her husband. Lady Vorena pushed into the room followed closely by the Sealord and his personal guard, as well as his son, Luca. When the wealthy man's wife saw her husband on the parlor carpet, she gasped and covered her mouth daintily with the back of her hand to stifle a little cry. The Cat nearly sneered at the gesture.

 _There was nothing remotely_ dainty _about Vorena Biro._

"Fetch the healer!" the woman shrieked, turning toward the household guard nearest her. Then man lit out as quickly as he could with a large crowd blocking the doorway and corridor. It was obvious to everyone watching, however, that a healer would not be of any benefit to Biro. Vorena seemed to think on it briefly, then decided to drop to her knees next to her husband and place a soothing hand upon his brow. _Her dress will be ruined,_ the Cat thought sarcastically, watching the woman's knees press into the bloody carpet with an audible _squish_. _What a great sacrifice; truly, she must love him._

"What has happened here?" the Sealord demanded in a booming voice and he seemed very affected by the scene, though his emotions did not reach his eyes, the assassin thought.

_How very interesting._

"I was just trying to find out, my lord," Owen said, indicating Mattine with a small jerk of her upper arm. The girl slumped slightly, looking even more pitiful. "This one was here when it happened but I haven't been able to get her calm enough to speak yet."

Vorena looked at the girl with her usual disdain but attempted to approximate a tone that conveyed something close to comfort when she urged the girl to be easy and tell them what had transpired.

Mattine's wracking sobs and terror abated at an appropriately sluggish rate and she began to tell her story.

"L.., Lord A… A… Atius bade me to… to f… f… fetch this little… pot… boy," the girl tried with hitching breaths.

"Oh, come now girl, get ahold of yourself!" the Sealord barked with impatience. Mattine jumped a little at his outburst and then took a few deep breaths to steel herself.

"Yes, my lord," she mumbled in a timid voice, sniffing a bit. Her words sounded more steady, at least, but she spoke with obvious anguish. "Lord Atius sent me from the feast to fetch this little pot boy to the parlor. I did as I was bid and brought him here but did not stay, as I had duties to attend to in the great hall."

"Why would my lord husband want a servant boy in the parlor?" Vorena asked as she looked up from her husband's grey face, not sounding convinced.

"I do not know, my lady," Mattine replied. "Or, I didn't know when he asked. I assumed he had some task he needed the boy to complete."

The answer seemed to satisfy the wealthy man's wife and she turned her attentions back to Biro, whose ragged, infrequent breaths had seemed to halt by then. His face appeared completely slack, the only sign of movement being the small amount of blood which still trickled from his mouth and nose.

"Continue, girl," the Sealord demanded. "Let's have the rest."

"I met Lord Atius in the passage as I left the parlor to head back into the feast and he told me that he had need of me also and brought me in here. I didn't understand why, but it is not my habit to question my betters."

"Just so," the Sealord commented.

"When we came into the chamber, Lord Atius told this boy to…"

Mattine hesitated, chewing her lip and looking around at the crowd nervously.

"Continue, girl!" Owen demanded, shaking her again as if to spur her to action.

"He… told the little boy to undress."

Syrio, who had settled into soft weeping as Mattine began to speak, started crying harder at these words.

There was a mixture of murmuring and gasps and nervous tittering around the room. Vorena's head snapped up from her husband's corpse and her eyes grew wide with a confused fury. The Sealord remained calm and seemingly unaffected by the cupbearer's words as he prompted the girl to continue and a nearby servant who had rushed in with the crowd from the great hall took pity on the weeping boy and helped him dress, shushing him quietly.

"What then?" the Sealord asked Mattine.

"Then… then Lord Atius began… well, he started to…" the girl choked her words out hesitantly and tears welled up once again in her eyes. She squeaked in a tiny voice, "Do I have to say it, my lord?"

"Yes! Speak, girl, and do not test me further!" the Sealord threatened.

"He started to… _have his way with the boy_!" Mattine declared in one great, rushed breath as if she would be unable to say the words if she did not do so quickly.

"What do you mean, girl?" the Sealord demanded. "Speak plainly, and do not embellish, for this man is respected throughout the city!"

The cupbearer's eyes were squeezed shut and she rushed to finish her tale, ignoring Vorena's enraged shriek and the cries and gasps of the crowd surrounding her. "I mean to say, your excellency… that… Lord Atius… _began to rape the boy._ I screamed, because I was so startled and the boy was crying and terrified and so I asked… well, I _told_ Lord Atius to stop, that he was hurting the boy, and this made him… so angry! He struck my face and grabbed the front of my dress, flinging me to the couch! I… I think that's how it ripped. He was telling me to... to get undressed as well, that he... wanted us both to... oh... Oh!"

Mattine wailed again, but opened her eyes and looked imploringly at the Sealord and Owen. Finding no sympathy, she drew in a great breath to gain control of her rampaging emotions and finished her tale.

"Well, I couldn't! I just _couldn't,_ and I was so scared! My lip was bleeding and so I was crying and he, Lord Atius, that is, became enraged, saying I would call the whole house with my screaming and he hit me again. The boy was crying, I was crying, and my lord was screaming at us to be silent and then… he was suddenly… coughing and coughing and coughing and blood was coming out, and then it was _everywhere,_ and I _tried_ to help him! I did! I held him up to keep him from collapsing but he was getting weaker and weaker and began to vomit and so I screamed for help! There was so much blood and I knew it must be his bleeding disorder! The excitement… it must have… stressed him too much!"

Mattine began sobbing again and Owen offered her his handkerchief (for the second time).

Lady Vorena had risen to her feet before Mattine finished her tale and the new widow looked _ghastly._ Her eyes were wild, her face pale, and her skirts were stained with her late husband's blood. She gave out a guttural cry as her husband's cupbearer continued to talk and seemed to be trying to fling herself upon the girl with her arms outstretched, fingers like claws grasping at the air in a vain attempt to silence the servant before she could finish her account. The Sealord himself was holding the woman back, stopping her from attacking the cupbearer.

The Cat beneath Mattine's flesh noted the woman's reaction with a certain aloof curiosity. Vorena seemed perfectly satisfied with her husband's death (the signs were subtle but could not be hidden from a nearly-Faceless Man) yet did not like what the girl had to say. The wealthy man's wife was more attached to her husband's reputation than to the man himself.

 _Well, I suppose that's understandable,_ the apprentice thought as she skillfully caused Mattine's lower lip to quiver in fear and shock, recoiling from her lady's anger.

Unable to stop the girl's mouth herself, Vorena screamed at Owen to take the girl away. Her exact words were, _Get her out of here, Owen! Take care of her! The boy, too!_

The implication, of course, was that Owen should aid the girl in disappearing, and should do so in such a way as to eliminate this witness to Atius Biro's shame. Of course, it was far too late for such a plan to do any good. Too many ears had heard the tale from the first hand witness and seen the precious young boy nodding along with her, indicating his agreement with the cupbearer's version of events.

That Vorena meant for Owen to _take care of_ the cupbearer and the pot boy in a manner that would likely consist of using hungry eels to dispose of their corpses was obvious to the Cat, though no one present would be able to say based on the words actually spoken that the wealthy man's wife wasn't really expressing concern and directing her household guard to find a way to _comfort_ and _soothe_ the two traumatized servants. Regardless of Lady Vorena's meaning, Owen did not need to be commanded twice and he expediently ushered Mattine and Syrio from the room (the quick-thinking Syrio even managing to slip on his shoes before he departed with the Faceless sellsword's hand clamped firmly on his thin little shoulder).

As the trio rounded the corner and flew down the passage that would take them past the kitchens, the girl suddenly slipped into a dim alcove along their route. When Owen turned around to see what was keeping his charge, he found her on her knees, bent over as her hand swept beneath a seldom-used chair.

"What are you doing?" he hissed. "We need to return this boy to the kitchen and get out of here!"

"I'm trying to keep the waif from killing me," the girl replied with maddening nonchalance, pulling something the size of her palm from beneath the chair. The Faceless sellsword squinted at it and saw it was some sort of dark, grey bowl. Next, the girl retrieved a small, thick, stone stick with a wide, blunted tip.

 _A mortar and pestle,_ the master realized. _Why?_

"And we're not leaving Syrio in the kitchen," the Cat continued. "I'm returning him to the inn, to his sister."

The master glared at the girl, telling her that they didn't have time for her nonsense but she was insistent and did not seem willing to budge without obtaining his agreement to take the boy along with them. Had this been any other mission and the girl any other girl, he would have left her there to figure her own way out, but _he had his orders,_ and so he gave in and agreed to take the urchin along.

"But we are _not_ stopping at the inn," he told the apprentice. "He'll have to come back to the temple. You can get him home _later_."

"What temple?" the boy asked, sounding excited by the prospect of going someplace new.

"You'll see," Mattine told the pot boy kindly, taking his hand and pulling him behind her.

The cupbearer and the pot boy followed the Faceless master, swiftly making their way to the garden door. The Cat was not surprised to find it unguarded. She supposed the handsome man would have seen to that, but she _was_ surprised by their destination. The assassin's apprentice gave the sellsword a questioning look, obviously unsure why he would lead them to a well-lit, walled-off garden with the bay gate shut tight and a few strangers, guests of the Biro family as yet unaware of the excitement inside, roaming around nearby.

"We're leaving in a rowboat," he told her, reading the inquiry on her face and answering her simply.

"But... how?"

"You'll see," he said, mimicking her earlier words to Syrio, smirking as usual.

They hurried along the path that led to the grove, fortunately not passing any of the guests of the feast who were all nearer to the lagoon than the trio of servants. Still, the Cat did not like all the light that shone along the path and illuminated them as they moved, so she muttered the companion phrase her master had taught her when she had learned how to light candles with her words and her intention (and a small amount of previously spilled blood).

"Aqtam 'amala," the girl whispered as they walked along the edge of the grove and the nearest torches and lanterns guttered out, leaving the small band in darkness. After a moment, their eyes adjusted and they ducked into the trees and approached the edge of the garden, an area with which the Cat was most familiar. Finding a likely tree, they began to climb and used a sturdy branch as a bridge to cross to the wall. The Cat was tall enough to reach the top with her fingers and strong enough to use those fingers and arms to haul herself up, but Syrio was not, so once she had settled herself on the wall, she reached down for him. The handsome man was clearly not eager to aid the boy but neither was he eager to get caught behind the walls of Biro's garden, and so he boosted the boy up to Mattine and then the master swung himself deftly atop the wall and swiftly dropped to the other side, landing in a crouch. Mattine was more tentative, using some familiar handholds to lower herself halfway down before dropping. Syrio was still atop the wall, looking down at them, seemingly afraid to jump and unable to climb as he had seen Mattine do.

"I'll catch you, Syrio," the girl called up to the pot boy, just loud enough for him to hear her. "Don't be afraid!"

"Don't be stupid," the Faceless master chided her. "He'll land on your head and knock you unconscious or you'll let him fall and he'll break his leg. Either way, I'll end up carrying someone."

"Well, what do _you_ propose, then?" the Cat spat in irritation, noting Syrio's growing apprehension.

"Here, give me your hands," he said, and when she hesitated, the master reached out and grasped her wrists roughly. Their arms formed a sort of seat and he called up to the boy in a gruff voice, saying he should lean forward and fall flat and they would catch him. Syrio still looked unsure, but the handsome man's tone brooked no argument and so the boy followed his directions and in two seconds, he had landed between Mattine and Owen, his fall broken by their arms which bent with his body and lowered him to the ground with a small _thud_.

"Are you alright?" Mattine asked Syrio with concern. He nodded at her with wide eyes and an even wider grin, and then saw that she was rubbing her wrists.

"Are _you_ alright, Mattine?" the boy asked, concern coloring his voice. "Did I hurt you?"

Before she could answer, the Cat heard the handsome man sigh loudly and then he grumbled, "She's _fine. You're fine._ I'm even fine, thank you for asking. Now, can we leave here before someone decides that Biro's death was not natural and comes looking for us to ask more questions?"

The Cat nodded, saying, "We can leave, just show us where to go. But you don't have to worry about Biro's death looking suspicious. Once the healer arrives and finds out that Lord Atius hasn't been following his dietary instructions, he'll give all the testimony needed as to the cause of Biro's death. We won't be suspected."

"Well, aren't you a clever little wolf?" Owen remarked, leading them along the narrow path that led between Biro's garden wall and that of his neighbor, moving in the opposite direction the Cat usually took when she used this route to escape the manse. The master was leading them toward the bay while the Cat usually headed toward the street. "How did you manage it? What poison did you use?"

"No poison," the girl answered truthfully. "Poisons can be discovered and traced."

"Then... how?"

"Do you really wish to stop for a detailed recounting now, or shall we implement this escape plan of yours?"

Syrio, tired of being left out of the conversation, registered his preference by chirping, "I think we should... inpellent the 'scape plan!"

Mattine tittered at the boy's charming mispronunciation and agreed, "Yes, Owen, let's _inpellent_ it now and discuss details _later_."

The handsome man scowled at the pair, muttering something about _impudent children_ causing Syrio to whisper to the girl, "I don't think he knows the word is _inpellent._ I think he just said _impoodent."_ The Cat bit back her laugh as they arrived at the water's edge, instead helping the little pot boy into the row boat that the master indicated they were taking. Throwing his sword inside the boat, the handsome man pushed off from the bank and walked with the small vessel into the water along a gentle slope until he was in the bay past his knees. He then hopped into the boat and grabbed a pair of oars, pulling away from the bank quickly and smoothly. There was another pair of oars in the bottom of the wooden vessel and so the Cat reached for them and sat them in place, using them to help Owen row, increasing their speed.

"Throw that blanket over you," the master assassin growled and it was just then that the Cat saw a dark, folded blanket of wool at her feet.

"I'm not cold," she protested.

"No, but your bright white gown is practically glowing in the moonlight," the handsome man countered. "The boy's clothes are dark enough, but yours stand out like a beacon."

Sighing, the girl picked up with scratchy blanket and threw it over her head and shoulders, like a cloak. Keeping it on proved difficult and annoying, especially as she tried to help row, but the girl finally tore a narrow strip from her skirts and used it as a tie to secure the blanket around her neck, freeing her hands so that she might help the group move more quickly towards Ragman's harbor; towards the temple; towards _home._

_And... towards Jaqen._

* * *

The hour was growing late as Marco drank from a goblet of imported Dornish wine in the common room of the inn near the Moon Pool. He was dressed impeccably, as usual, and Olive noted that he looked... _tense._ The serving girl suspected that _Mattine_ was to meet him here and he was impatient for her arrival. _He_ must _mean to see Mattine. Why else would he be here?_ the girl wondered. Did he not know of the great feast at the Biro manse? Mattine would surely be wrapped up with that for some time yet. Unless... _unless..._

As the wench wondered if Mattine might soon be arriving, her _duties_ at the manse at their end, Marco was joined by another man, a stranger who had just arrived at the inn, strolling through the door with a polite nod to Staaviros before he sat himself across from the handsome merchant. The two men began to speak quietly, their voices so low that even when Olive passed near them to remove the tankards from the table next to theirs, she could not make out the subject of their conversation. Had the girl been able to hear the disguised Lorathi speaking to the stern-faced man, however, she would have been none the wiser, as she was not acquainted with the subjects of their conversation. _Or so she would have thought._

"Have you seen the Lyseni?" Jaqen asked in a low voice.

"I have. And I have instructed him."

Jaqen looked at his brother with his eyebrows slightly raised, knowing the _instruction_ couldn't have gone as smoothly as the stern-faced man was indicating.

"He was naturally resistant," Marco's companion added, noting the look in the merchant's false eyes, "but with the proper inducement, he began to see the wisdom in complying."

The Lorathi nodded grimly, wondering what _inducement_ had been used on the Bear. His brother did not seem inclined to provide him with _that_ particular detail, however.

"What news?" Jaqen prompted, eager to learn of his own apprentice's success or failure.

"It is said that Lord Atius bled to death. The word is beginning to spread around the city."

Marco's fine features arranged themselves in a look of mild concern before he asked quietly if things had gone awry and the girl had resorted to her knives.

"No, no," the stern-faced assassin assured his brother. "It was all quite _natural._ It seems that Biro has been suffering with a bleeding sickness for the last few weeks, or so I have been told. A healer who had been tending to him recently has had much to say on the matter. I believe he would like it to be known that he provided the appropriate care to the man but Biro did not heed his recommendations or follow through with his ministrations."

"Ah," the Lorathi remarked, still confused. He would be sure to get the details from his lovely girl later. He knew that Biro had been struck with a sudden disorder of his gut, but this bleeding problem was not something of which he had been made aware. _What had his little Cat gotten up to these past few weeks?_

"It was quite a mess, I'm told," Marco's companion continued. "And to make matters worse, it seems that Lord Atius expired just as he was engaging in some _terribly unsavory_ activities."

"Oh?"

"Yes, a poor little servant was _defiled,_ " the stern-faced assassin revealed.

The Lorathi felt suddenly cold but before he could react, his brother clarified his statement.

"It was a young Braavosi boy of no more than five or six, poor lad. When Lord Atius' cupbearer tried to intervene, she was brutalized."

Jaqen's fingers curled savagely in on themselves as he formed two fists under the table.

"She'll recover," the stern-faced man added mildly, surveying his brother's false countenance. He found the Lorathi's expression to be adequately serene and continued, "The injuries were minor. A black eye, a broken lip, nothing more."

"And so the Lyseni left her in the manse so that he might come here?" the Cat's master asked, his voice tinted with mild disapproval.

"She was not left _alone,_ " the Bear's master corrected. "Our brother guides her and they are likely even now on their way back to the temple. I'm sure the principal elder is eager to hear her tale, and our brother is eager to get her off the streets as she cannot change her face as readily as he can."

"Just so," Jaqen remarked, hiding his distaste at the prospect of his lovely girl spending even _more_ time alone with his most _handsome_ brother, as well as his concern that she would be entering into the temple without his protection. He still had not completely uncovered the truth regarding the canal plot and now she was in the company of one of the plot's perpetrators. He also had yet to resolve the mystery of the Cat being given Mattine's face to wear and then being sent to live where that face would be known. Of course, the repercussions of _that_ oversight (if it even w _as_ an oversight) would be dealt with shortly, but that did not explain why it had occurred in the first place.

All of these unknowns made Jaqen uncomfortable. As much as Arya at times represented chaos and wild abandon, her master was defined by order and control. The unexplained left the Lorathi feeling _unsettled_. Disorder strained his patience and denied him peace. Whimsy was an anathema to him. Though he was quite adept at improvisation, Jaqen's strength lay in quick, precise planning and attention to detail. That he did not have all the information he needed to solve these puzzles involving his lovely girl made him feel as if he was walking in the dark and it was like to drive him mad.

He admonished himself to focus as Mattine's friend, _his lovely girl's friend,_ approached them so that she might inquire if the merchant's companion would like a cup of wine or ale.

"Water," the man rasped shortly. Olive gave the stern-faced master her best dimpled smile, leaning a little lower over the table toward him to ask in an almost _suggestive_ tone if there was anything else he might like.

"Some bread with honey? Or something else _sweet_?" the girl inquired with a giggle, but her smile died on her lips at the man's expression. He was not charmed by her flirtatious manner and it quickly became apparent to her that she would not gain any coin by spending her time trying to entice _this_ sour patron. When he indicated that he needed nothing else, the girl bobbed her head and fled to the kitchen. Jaqen surveyed the room and noted that aside from the innkeeper, they were the only two present. The Lorathi assassin cast his eyes towards the door and took another small sip from his goblet, awaiting the Bear's arrival.

* * *

 _ **Hungry Like the Wolf**_ -Duran Duran

 _ **Die, Die My Darling**_ -Metallica


	48. Chapter 48

The bay was calm and for a while, the only noise the Cat heard was that which was created by the oars quietly splashing into the dark waters. She had not questioned the handsome man's plan for returning home, but after an hour or so of rowing and the muscles in her arms and shoulders beginning to tire, she wondered at his choice. Would not leaving on foot have been easier? She looked at the master assassin over her shoulder as she rowed and asked him.

"Perhaps," he conceded, "assuming we did not run into any _Bravos_ demanding a duel and no one was alarmed enough by your horrific appearance to impede our progress as they tried to find and staunch your wound. And an unlikely trio consisting of a sellsword, an orphan, and a blood-covered servant rapidly leaving from the direction of the manse in which one of the most prominent citizens of the town had just died would not garner _much_ suspicion, I'm sure."

His tone made clear just how stupid he found her question to be. She then remembered the gown beneath her woolen blanket, its draped, white folds ruined by Biro's blood. She supposed she did look rather horrific, especially to someone who did not know what had transpired at the manse. She had not thought to change before she left; indeed, there had been no time. Still, she was a master at remaining unseen when she did not wish to be spied, and so flying through the dark streets of the city should have posed no problems for a Cat, blood-stained gown or no. But, she supposed it would have been much harder to remain completely stealthy with a small boy in tow. Sighing, the girl pulled her oars in and set them carefully in the boat, telling _Owen_ that she needed to rest a bit. She swung her legs over her seat and turned to face him.

Syrio had curled up in the bottom of the boat and was fast asleep, his face relaxed and smooth under the moonlight. The Cat kept her voice soft and low so as not to wake him.

"Biro said something to me," she revealed to the master, "as he was dying."

"Dying men often feel compelled to unburden themselves," the handsome man remarked with a slight shrug of his shoulders. The continued rowing did not seem to be straining him at all, the Cat noted with a small degree of irritation.

"Yes, but what _he_ felt compelled to unburden himself about was... rather _odd,_ I thought."

"Oh?" the master said, but his tone was one of complete disinterest. It was almost as if he was determined _not_ to engage the acolyte in conversation. She was having none of it.

" _Owen_ ," the girl wearing Mattine's face hissed, "aren't you even the least little bit curious?"

"No."

"And why is that?"

The Faceless Man was quiet for a while, and as the time and the silence stretched out before them, the Cat began to think he did not intend to answer her at all. Finally, though, the handsome man spoke.

"Because, little wolf, Biro is dead, as you know very well; ushered from this life to the next by your own hand. Nothing he said to you matters now."

The girl wasn't so sure, though. _It might matter,_ she thought. _If the wealthy man truly has..._ had _no children, and if he didn't arrange for Hellind's death, it might matter, because it means that I have been tugged and moved and controlled by strings I did not know were attached to me, pulled by hands I cannot see, for reasons I do not understand._

"It might matter," the Cat whispered simply.

She wasn't sure if her companion heard her or not, but she did not attempt to broach the topic again as she lost herself in her own thoughts, wondering if the wealthy man's dying words were somehow part of yet another mysterious plot that she had stumbled upon. She did not understand that there was a larger mystery. She could not see the ties that bound all the plots together into a single, vast conspiracy. She did not know that she was at the very core of the larger intrigue.

As the girl thought of Biro's final words and Vorena's reaction the story laid out by a frightened cupbearer, the handsome man spoke again.

"My 'scape plan has been inpellent," he remarked dryly, catching the apprentice off her guard.

" _What_?"

"Since we are no longer lingering mere feet away from the place where you perpetrated a crime only moments before, I think we have time to talk about the details," the master explained. "It's _later_."

"You're anxious to know how I did it, aren't you?" the girl asked rhetorically, a small smirk starting to shape her mouth. She found she rather liked holding something back that the handsome man desired to know, though she could not say why exactly. Perhaps it was because he had been the one thus far who had titillated her with promises of what _could be_ if he favored her with his expertise and taught her things, making her fairly yearn for his lessons. He always left her wanting something from _him_. Now that things were turned around, it delighted her more than she would have believed it could. She had expected that he would shrug or smirk at her question. She had not expected him to answer, but of course, she should have known he would be driven to contradict her.

"Oh, I am _never_ anxious," the master assured her in his bored tone as he continued steadily rowing.

_Worry is not for us, brother._

"Oh, no? I must have mistaken your mood outside of Biro's garden wall, then. I was certain I was detecting _anxiety._ "

"No, little wolf, that was vexation. They are hardly the same."

"Vexation? Are you certain? Well then, I humbly accept your correction."

As the false sincerity dripped from her tongue, the acolyte sat in a graceful pose on her small seat, gazing off into the distance. To anyone who did not know better (as the handsome man did), the girl would seem to be admiring the stars in the night sky as she kept her hands folded daintily in her lap, her demeanor so cool and unaffected that she gave the impression that snow would not have melted in her mouth. The boat grew quiet once again and soon, the Cat heard the master's frustrated sigh.

" _Well_?" he impelled.

"Well what?" she returned almost as if he had surprised her out of her own deep thoughts, deliberately obtuse.

"I am not above throttling you," he warned, dragging his oars a bit more forcefully than he had previously, creating a greater splash with each stroke. The apprentice bit the inside of her cheek to suppress a smile. Her expression remained aloof, belying how greatly diverted she was just then.

"Well, since you're not _anxious_ , I thought the tale might wait until we had arrived at the temple. That way, I will only have to recount it once," the Cat explained, using her _sensible_ tone, her words sounding positively _considered_.

"Hmm," the handsome man mused, his eyes narrowing with concentration as if he were carefully weighing the wisdom in her words, "yes. Yes, your plan may be best. It's very _efficient_ ; very _smart_. Since you seem to be the expert, perhaps you wouldn't mind instructing me. Which of these do you think would be most efficient and smart for _me_ : telling your master how you sought me out in my own chamber and begged me to pin you to my bed _or_ telling him how you had difficulty concentrating on your mission tonight because you were overwhelmed with lust for your brother?"

_So_ very _good at exploiting things._

Naturally, the girl's first instinct was to protest, and loudly. She felt like screaming at him, telling him that she had _not_ lusted after the Bear (though she might have been willing to concede that she had, perhaps, appreciated her brother's beauty, probably for the first time ever). She also wanted to point out (adamantly) that she had not _begged_ Owen for _anything_ ( _demanded_ was more like it, but she didn't suppose that would sound any better to Jaqen's ear). She was a quick study, however, and so rather than jumping to defend herself against the assassin's implied threat, the acolyte willed herself to stillness. She gathered her wits briefly before she responded to his attempt to rile her. Instead of the peevishness she itched to display, she suggested a compromise.

"Tell me that you're _anxious_ to hear my tale and I'll answer all of your questions," the apprentice offered.

"Tell me your tale, and I'll not tell _Jaqen_ that you stuck your tongue in my ear," was the handsome man's counter-offer.

"I never!"

"Near enough."

"You are _impossible!_ " the girl declared in an exasperated tone, folding her arms over her chest and glaring at the assassin across the boat from her. She was half-tempted to fling the waif's pestle at his smug face. Syrio muttered a little in his sleep and stirred, disturbed by the increased volume of their arguing.

"And _you_ never expected _my_ words to pour forth from _your_ mouth, yet there they are," he retorted. "For I was nearly about to say the very same thing of you, only _impossible_ didn't seem a strong enough description."

She stared hard at him and him at her and then, nearly at the same time, they burst out laughing. Syrio rolled over and moaned, wanting to know what was so funny. The girl smiled down at the little boy with Mattine's mouth and her big, kind eyes and shushed him, telling him to go back to sleep as they had a long way to travel yet. When the boy settled, the Cat looked up into the assassin's face and quirked up one side of her mouth, matching his expression.

"Shall we declare a truce?" the girl asked, her voice amused.

"What? Do you mean you'll tell me _your_ tale without any more impertinence and I'll keep _my_ tale to myself without any more threats to tell your master?"

"Something more like I'll tell you the truth of what happened at the manse and you'll keep your fantastical lies to yourself."

"They're not _strictly_ lies," the master pointed out.

"They're not strictly truth, either."

"Near enough," he said once again.

"You can't be _near enough_ to the truth. It's either truth, or it isn't."

The man sighed, saying, "You are so very young." He reminded her of Jaqen at his most frustrating just then.

The Cat rolled her false eyes and frowned, demonstrating her usual displeasure at attention being drawn to her _youth._ She had just delivered the gift of death to the second wealthiest man in Braavos, in the midst of a great celebration, surrounded by a house full of guards. She had convinced the most influential citizens of the city, including the Sealord himself, that Biro's fine reputation was a farce while exonerating herself of any wrongdoing at the same time. She had even escaped the scene without incident and _with_ the waif's workroom equipment. However, in spite of these grand accomplishments, yet another man in her life was telling her that she was somehow _too young._ Simply because she felt the idea of _truth_ was not fluid but was, rather, very _black and white_ , she was accused of being... _naïve?_ That's what the master's tone seemed to suggest as he sighed and gave her a look that was both wistful and pitying.

It was not that the girl had any problem with lying. She certainly didn't feel bound to any moral code that would prevent her from telling a lie when it was necessary, or it suited her, or the mood struck her. Part of being Faceless was to be a master of lies, in a way. She just didn't like to think of her mentor's reaction to the specific lies about which the handsome man was japing. Of course, Jaqen was particularly adept at reading the truth behind people's words and faces. Surely, he would see right through such half-truths... _wouldn't he?_ But it wasn't worth the risk. She found herself regularly in enough trouble that she did not feel the need to borrow more. Still, the comment on her youth had the feel of an insult and she was loath to let it pass without a retort.

"If I am _so very young_ , then what are you?" she sneered, clearly ready to supply _old_ and _jaded_ as options if the assassin was unable to answer quickly enough. But the handsome man was remarkably skilled at supplying ready answers.

" _Experienced_ ," he replied, and he cocked his head slightly to the side as he said it, reading her reaction. He seemed to expect something; some specific sort of response, but she did not understand what it was and so she shrugged and after a moment, so did he, pausing slightly in his rowing to do so.

"I'll help you row," she offered. "My arms are no longer burning." She reached for her oars, meaning to turn around in her seat again and start with her strokes but the handsome man's voice stopped her.

"I am very... _interested_ to hear your tale, little wolf," he told the girl and there was no detectable mockery in his tone. A quick glance at his face revealed it to be completely devoid of any smirking, which was nothing short of miraculous as far as the girl was concerned. The Cat bobbed her head, indicating that she would tell him all. After she had turned her back to him and dipped her oars into the waters of the bay but before she had begun her tale of how Biro's death was accomplished, the acolyte could tell the handsome man's smirk had appeared once again. _Of course it had._ It was obvious in his voice as he added, "And in the future, please know that you are very welcome to stick your tongue in my ear any time that you like."

* * *

Marco's cup was still half-full of wine by the time the Bear appeared at the front door of the inn, though in truth this was more because the assassin did not wish to dull his senses rather than the boy's rapid travel from the place at which he had earlier met his master to the place where he now stood. In fact, the Bear had taken his time walking to the inn, his dread building with his advancing steps.

The man who wore a stern-face had finished his water but had refused a refill when Olive asked and so she had, once again, retreated to the kitchen, thus missing the Bear's entrance. The smartly attired acolyte barely glanced at the pair sitting together in the common room, but instead spoke to Staaviros, asking after the inn's serving girl. The innkeeper nodded toward the kitchen, indicating that the Bear was welcome to seek her there and the large Lyseni moved deliberately toward the door that separated the kitchen and the common room, his face stony.

After the apprentice's form disappeared through the doorway, Marco approached Staaviros, asking after a room. The inn was nearly empty that night, so the Faceless merchant was told that he had his choice of accommodations. When he inquired about the chamber just at the top of the stairs, he was informed that the particular room he desired was very small and cramped and was therefore used to house one of the servants, the tavern girl who had brought him his wine.

"The one next to it, then," he said to the innkeeper, shrugging.

"We have larger, more comfortable rooms," Staaviros told him.

"No, the one next to the servant's room will do."

A key was exchanged for coin and the two Faceless masters climbed the stairs to the appointed chamber as the innkeeper looked after them with a strange expression. At nearly the exact same time, Olive was gushing over her lover in the kitchen, much to the chagrin of the others present.

"You look very fine," Olive squealed again, for at least the fourth time since the Bear had walked through the door and she had spied him.

"Do you think him a dullard?" the cook snapped. "You've already told him that, again and again."

"Well, he does," the wench said defensively. "And he should know it!"

"He _knows_ ," groaned Will. He was busy with washing the dishes since Syrio had been sent to work as extra help for the Biro family during their feast. " _You_ know. _Veera_ knows. _I_ know. We can't _help_ but know since you've been going on about it _nonstop_ since he walked through the door!"

"Oh, shut up," Olive told the boy. "You're just jealous."

During all the arguing, the Bear stood silently to the side, watching everyone, especially Olive, with unfathomable eyes.

"I'm not jealous," Will insisted. "No offense, Willem. You do look very fine tonight, but I just don't see why we have to get all twisted up about it."

The Lyseni nodded slightly toward the boy, signaling his understanding. Will had not offended him. If anything, he should have been more irritated with the cook, who was muttering under her breath about "such ridiculous frippery" or something of that nature but he did not have it in him to be insulted just then. He simply ignored her.

"Willem, would you like to go for a walk? I think Veera and Will can finish up the rest without me," Olive suggested in a breathless sort of way. She knew the boy had things of import to discuss with her and she wished to give him the opportunity, and the privacy, to do so.

The Bear cleared his throat, trying to dislodge the lump he felt in it. The action was futile.

"Dearest," he began, ignoring the cook's muttering and Will's eye-rolling as he employed the endearment, "it's so late, and the Moon Pool is practically crawling with _Bravos_. Perhaps we should stay in?"

"Oh, very well," she sighed. "Come."

Olive took Willem's hand and led him through the kitchen door and back into the common room. The patrons she had been serving just prior to her lover's arrival had apparently left, as had Staaviros, and they found the room empty.

"We could sit here, I suppose, since no one is around," Olive offered.

"Do you think… Might we go to your chamber?"

The girl cast a sideways glance at the boy, a coy little smile playing on her lips. The acolyte's heart pounded nearly out of his chest as he took in her expression. _How he loved that face. Her look just then tugged at him and he recalled that he had wanted to come here to explain how it was they might remain together, if she would have him under such circumstances._

"Willem, are you suggesting something… _improper_?" the wench teased.

The boy blinked hard at her words and his response was unguarded, his tone natural and sincere.

" _Improper?_ " the Bear nearly choked out, and he sounded as if he were caught between a great laugh and a sob. _If only she knew, if only she knew!_

"I'm just teasing you, you silly boy!" Olive giggled. "I _know_ you're suggesting something improper!" Here, she winked at him and then pulled him along toward the stairs.

"Wait!" he barked, startling her. Seeing her stunned expression, he softened his voice and explained. "I'm… thirsty. Can I… take a cup of something? Wine? Or even water?"

"Of course," the wench replied, nodding. She patted the boy's hand gently, taking note of his solemn expression. It began to worry her. She knew he had wanted to discuss their future and _before_ the nameday feast, he had seemed… _hopeful,_ if a little worried. But now… "Willem, did something happen? At the nameday feast, I mean? You seem… Well, your mood is altered."

"I'm sorry, my sweet. I'm just very tired and it has me feeling rather out of sorts," the acolyte said, and it was true, though it had very little to do with his demeanor just then.

Olive gave the boy a sympathetic look as she poured him a goblet of wine which he gratefully accepted. The Lyseni took one deep swallow of his drink and then his eyes settled on his lover's face. She thought he looked a little grim. She could not tell how deep his agony truly was, however. She did not read his overpowering despair. Perhaps he would make a Faceless Man after all.

The pair began to ascend the staircase then, heading toward the wench's chamber, the serving girl leading the apprentice by his hand, up and up and up.

* * *

How strange it felt to be observing without _actually_ observing, left to await a certain thing but not being involved in bringing that thing to pass. A master of focus, Jaqen might have been perfectly content to wait in stillness and peace in the months and years past, though being a witness was not a function the Lorathi frequently found he was called upon to perform, nor was it one he particularly enjoyed. Now, especially, with all that had occurred since his return to Braavos, he found sitting in a chair and _waiting_ to be more tiresome than he might have otherwise found it, for though his body was still and his false face placid, his mind was spinning with all of his troubling thoughts. He longed for a purpose or task which was more active; something that might give him respite from his inner turmoil.

Instead, he was sitting in a chair in a cramped little room at a familiar inn, staring across the dim space at his brother.

Unlike his _handsome_ brother, the brother who most often wore a stern face was not one to engage in idle talk. So, the two sat in silence. Normally, this would have suited Jaqen fine, but he craved a distraction from the questions that pestered him (mostly because he was unable to answer them and an unanswered question produced in Jaqen the same reaction that petticoats, embroidery lessons, face powders and rose-scented bath water produced in his apprentice, though he doubted his objection to the cause of his irritation would ever be as vociferous as hers).

The sound of footsteps drawing nearer disrupted the quiet of the room. There were two sets, ascending. Then, as they seemed very close, they stopped and there was quiet for a moment. After a brief pause, there came the sound of a door opening and then closing.

"You do not seem happy to be here, brother," the stern-faced man remarked after a while. His voice was low, nearly a whisper. His tone was matter-of-fact.

"Happy. Sad. Angry. A man may perform his duty regardless of his mood," Jaqen answered with a shrug. "The Many-Faced god has no need of a man's happiness, only his obedience."

"Just so," the Bear's master agreed. "I only wonder at the cause of your mood, not your right to have it."

"Curiosity has never been your vice, brother," Jaqen pointed out. "Yours makes a man wonder if another of his brothers is wearing the stern face tonight, disguising himself."

The stern-faced man gave a short, mirthless chuckle, saying, "If there was anyone else behind this face, I have no doubt you would discover it effortlessly. That has always been your gift."

The Lorathi nodded in humble acknowledgment, commenting, "The Many-Faced god has blessed each of us with our own unique gifts."

"Indeed, and some of us have been more blessed than others. Your apprentice seems to be particularly gifted."

"Just so," Jaqen assented casually, but he felt his skin prickle slightly with alarm and anticipation. _Did the stern-faced man also know of a girl's rare abilities? Did he know how she could reap men's thoughts and control the movements of animals?_

"I imagine she will make a fine assassin," Jaqen's brother continued, "though she has a streak of stubbornness in her."

The Cat's master allowed himself a quiet snort at that. The stern-faced man's gift was for _understatement_ , it seemed.

"A man once believed the Lyseni boy was not ready, but he has since seen the acolyte make great strides. This boy will also make a fine Faceless Man," Jaqen allowed, deflecting the focus of the discussion from his own apprentice in the hopes of avoiding further talk of her _talents._

"Hmm," the Bear's master hummed, considering. "A moon's turn ago, I would have agreed with you but now... He must first earn his face. I will reserve judgment on his prowess in the Faceless arts until he completes this task."

_A moon's turn ago. Before the boy had met the tavern wench and decided to fall in love._ The Lorathi assassin wondered if there was any blame in the words of his stern-faced brother, and if so, was it blame for the boy because he could not rule his intentions, or blame for his lovely girl, because she had purposefully placed the temptation in her brother's path? But the Bear's predicament was not the fault of his sister. _No one can force one person to love another,_ Jaqen thought, _just as no one can force one person to give up their love of another._ Immediately, his mind turned to his _own_ untenable position; his struggle to balance his obligation to do his duty with his desire to do... _other things_ (things suggested to him by his new and all-encompassing _feelings_ ). Love had crept up on him and bound him before he recognized what was happening. Love had rendered him helpless to resist its pull. He had not asked for it, nor had he sought it; indeed, he had not desired it at all, for it was a useless thing; a troublesome emotion that made one prone to weakness.

What need had he of love? What use?

The snowy flesh of Arya's smooth shoulder and soft cheek filled his mind and as he pictured her wide, grey eyes, he understood the answer.

_No need of it, but still, there it was. It was not to be helped._

Jaqen released a quiet sigh, and his brother gave him a small smile, a rare thing to see on that stern face. It seemed laden with _sympathy,_ as if the stern-faced man understood that the sigh was not triggered by the Lorathi's concern for the Bear's ability to complete the task at hand, but was due to something else entirely.

* * *

"I find that I am enjoying this retelling less than I had thought I would," the handsome man complained in a drawl. The splash of the oars was as rhythmic as ever.

The Cat, who had barely begun to explain how she had enacted her plan in the manse, scowled at the master over her shoulder, irritated by the interruption.

"It's less entertaining if I can't see your face," was his explanation. "Facial expressions are an essential part of successful story-telling. Also, it's hard to hear you when you're facing away from me."

"Well, do you want my help rowing or do you want to be _entertained?_ " the girl snapped.

"For as much good as your rowing is doing us, I choose entertainment."

The girl dropped her head back, staring up at the heavens and responding to the master's words with a great groan. After a minute, she pulled her head back into a neutral position so that she could shake it back and forth in a gesture of mild consternation.

"I'm not sure why I even agreed to tell you this," she ground out slowly.

"See? Just there—are you gritting your teeth? Because you _sound_ as if you are gritting your teeth, but as I cannot _see_ your teeth, I am uncertain as to their status."

The sound the girl made then reminded the handsome man of someone who had been punched in the gut but was trying very hard to mask their cry. It was a muffled, "Oomph!" and after he heard it, he saw that she drew her oars in and tossed them to the floor of the boat in a fit of pique.

_So very young_ , he thought, one corner of his mouth pulling up slightly.

The clatter of wood against wood caused the little orphan boy to flinch, but he rolled over and was quiet after that. The girl turned around and once again, faced Owen.

"You were saying?" he prompted, his voice almost jolly, both corners of his mouth now turned upward.

"I was _saying_ ," she began, her aggravation with his jovial mood plain on her face and in her tone, "that I altered Atius Biro's wine tonight."

"In what way?"

"By adding ground glass to it."

" _Ground glass_?" the man returned, sounding incredulous. "But... ground glass makes a poor weapon."

"Typically."

"The cuts... they're too small. You'd need so many of them... And ground glass doesn't work quickly. Wounds that tiny would heal too fast. They wouldn't be likely to cause enough bleeding to kill a man, especially as fast as Biro died."

"Just so," she acknowledged, but the handsome man had descended into what the girl thought of as his _lecturing mode,_ too intent on functioning as an instructor to note her response. It was amusing to see him try to explain to her why her plan should fail when they both had witnessed its resounding success.

"Because of the variable nature of each man's wound healing capability, the effects would not be predictable," the handsome man continued, his brow slightly furrowed.

"Unless you had already taken away man's ability to clot," the Cat suggested. "Then the effects become _quite_ predictable."

"Took a man's... ah!"

It was her turn to smile.

" _The bruising_ ," he continued, then looked at the girl sharply. "How... _fortunate_ that this man should lose his ability to clot just as you had decided to feed him ground glass."

"Fortune did not enter into it," the Cat retorted, perhaps a bit smugly. "In situations where a certain outcome _must_ be obtained, it is better to make your own luck."

"Little wolf, I couldn't agree more. But how did you ensure Biro would be compromised in this way?"

"Poor Lord Atius," the girl moaned with mock sympathy. "His gut had begun to trouble him of late."

"I am aware..."

"It was strange that the foods _most_ responsible for his troubles were the very same ones which would also thicken his blood. Those had to be eliminated. _For his comfort,_ of course."

"Of course. But such a diet... It would not render him as like to bleed as you would need," the master pointed out. "At least not in time to render him vulnerable during the feast."

"Well, as it happens, I know how to make a tea that has some ability to soothe a troubled gut," the girl explained, then added, "but mostly, it was filled with things that thin the blood."

"It was an _interesting_ coincidence that the wealthy man's gut began to trouble him just as you had need to begin thinning his blood," the master observed.

"Yes, wasn't it?" she grinned.

"How did you do it? I know of no poison that will cause such belly aches and watery bowels without leading to death eventually, even at low doses."

"That's because there wasn't such a poison. Until a few weeks ago, that is."

"You created it?"

The girl nodded and the master shook his head slightly, appreciating the apprentice's cleverness but still not quite believing it.

"So, you created a new poison specifically to upset this man's digestion, just so you could offer him a remedy which was really a disguised blood-thinner?"

"You have the right of it," the Cat told the handsome man. "Of course, the remedy wasn't much of a remedy. Just the passage of time relieved his belly aches as much as the bit of ginger I gave him in his tea. Cat Gut has a relatively short duration..."

" _Cat Gut_?"

"The name was Jaqen's idea," she admitted.

"I wouldn't have credited him with so much wit," the handsome man said. "I would have figured him to name it something more... _brooding_ and _serious_."

The girl cocked her head, her false curls falling in a cascade over the blanket draped across her shoulders. She studied the master's face in the moonlight for a while before she spoke again.

"What is the root of this antipathy between you and my master?" she asked softly.

" _Antipathy_?" the assassin repeated, his response indicating some degree of distaste. "Surely you don't think Faceless Men spare time for such nonsense? I have great respect for your master."

"Yet you do not seem to _like_ him very much," the Cat pressed. "Is there bad blood of some sort? You two never have anything pleasant to say about each other."

"Wait... What? What has he said about me?" the man responded with mock dismay.

The acolyte rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest, pursing her lips. Her posture indicated that she was awaiting some sort of answer from the master and did not intend to finish her story until she had it. The handsome man continued rowing the boat, pulling them ever closer to the northwestern edge of the city where the streets and canals of Braavos melted and flowed into the docks of Ragman's Harbor. The girl could see the burning lanterns on the ships in port and the few flickering torches glowing like far-away stars outside of the doors of the harbor's winesinks and inns. The distant flames framed the rowing master's head like a crown of light. After a time, the handsome man seemed to give in.

"I cannot say what sort of feelings my brother has about me," he said with a shrug.

"Well, he's probably displeased that you threw me into the canal with man-eating eels."

"What, that? There's not a scratch on you, so he can hardly hold that against me, especially after I just spent an inordinate amount of time keeping a dead man out of your bed. I certainly deserve some credit there."

"Yes, about that..." the Cat said. "I really don't understand the point."

"Would you have preferred that I let Biro rape you?"

The girl tilted her head again as she looked at her companion, trying to puzzle out this strange mission the Faceless master seemed to have undertaken. First, there was Jaqen teaching her how to defend herself in close quarters and all his concern about what Gendry might have done to her (done _with_ her?) Then, the Kindly Man had wanted her to know she should not share the wealthy man's bed, even in the service of Him of Many Faces and in the name of successfully completing her mission. And _now_ , she found that _Owen_ had not just been a nursemaid to her as she played the part of a cupbearer, but a chastity guard as well! He might have been performing a favor for Jaqen, she supposed, but more likely, it was something the Kindly Man had directed him to do. Or... she supposed it was _possible_ that it was a contract. But who would hire a Faceless Man to guard another Faceless Man's virtue?

_Jon,_ she thought. _He would do it, but he doesn't know where I am, or even if I am alive. My mother... Lady Stoneheart, she might have demanded such protection from Jaqen before they parted company, but it still seems unlikely. If that were the case, he surely would have told me of it, wouldn't he? And wouldn't he have seen to it himself rather than sending his brother?_

"It's not that I don't... hmm... _appreciate_ your efforts," she clarified. "I just don't understand _why_ you went to the trouble in the first place. Was it Jaqen? Did he ask you to look after me?"

"I was sent to the manse to keep Lord Atius from despoiling you."

_Despoiling?_

He said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world to say; as if the very idea of such a thing, at least in the House of Black and White, was not incredibly odd. This gave the Cat pause. If these were truly the handsome man's orders, they could only have come from the Kindly Man, and if the Kindly Man was indeed so set on protecting her, then how could he possibly be involved with the canal plot? And _why_ was the elder so determined to safeguard her innocence, anyway? She was lost to her own thoughts, unbelievable as they were.

It did not make sense! Why all this concern for her virtue? She grimaced to think what might happen if she ever actually desired to give her maidenhead to someone. Between Jaqen, Owen, and the Kindly Man, there was like to be a riot within the House of Black and White! _Not that such a thing is ever going to happen,_ she thought. _There is no one I would even consider..._

_Not even Jaqen?_ her wicked little voice whispered from somewhere deep inside of her.

She rolled her eyes and shook her head, irritated at the turn her thoughts had taken. She didn't have _time_ to be lovelorn, or have lusty thoughts, or whatever it was that ladies did when they fell in love with someone. There was too much else going on. The more the Cat insisted to herself that she not think on such things, the more she pictured Jaqen in his bed, twisted in his sheets.

_Incredible!_ she thought, closing her eyes and shaking her head again. _You are the most ridiculous assassin in the world!_ The handsome man assumed her gesture was a reaction to his words (and, indirectly, it was), so he responded to it.

"You may shake your head until Valyria is doomed a second time, little wolf, but there were many nights when I was the only thing that stood between a wealthy man and an isolated bedchamber where a sweet, innocent cupbearer slept."

"I'm not so innocent," she growled.

"Actually, you are, and you have _me_ to thank for it."

"But... _why_?" the apprentice pressed. "Is it because I'm the only girl among the acolytes? Was the waif given such special consideration when she trained?"

"Why do _you_ think you were protected?"

"It seems that whenever I ask you anything, you answer by asking me what _I_ think," the girl complained. "I do not like this dodging and avoidance of my questions. I would like an answer."

"I am certain that you would," the handsome man said mildly. "I hope that someday you find the answers you seek."

" _Do you_?"

The master shrugged, saying, "No, not really. I find I'm rather indifferent to it all, but saying so seems... _callous_."

Her small throwing blade was strapped to her thigh. She quickly tabulated the number of seconds it would take her to grasp it and bury it in the fake sellsword's throat.

" _Three,_ " she hissed through gritted teeth. As if he understood what her cryptic utterance meant, the man smirked at her.

"Oh, little wolf, you should really rule your face better. After all, you'll not be an acolyte much longer."

"What do you know about my trial?"

" _My, my,_ aren't you a curious little cat?" the master chuckled and then, raising the pitch of his voice to imitate her, he continued. " _Why do you and my master dislike each other so? Why did you protect me in the manse? Why did you throw me in the canal? What do you know about my trial?"_

_A poor imitation,_ she thought. _My voice never sounds that fraught._ She glowered at him.

"Some things are not meant for you to know," he told her simply. "Some things, you are better off _not_ knowing."

"And _some_ things," she began, narrowing her eyes, "people say just to mislead you."

The handsome man's smile grew as he took in her expression and considered her words, nodding his head as he replied, "Just so. But then, aren't you a nearly-Faceless Man? Aren't you trained to know when something is said merely to mislead you?"

"Yes, but knowing that something is a lie is not the same as knowing _why_ I am being lied to."

"Indeed," he agreed. "It is not the same."

"So, will you tell me?"

"Will I tell you what?"

"Will you tell me _why_ you are lying to me?" the girl asked in an exasperated tone.

"Who said I _was_ lying to you?" the handsome man demanded, and his good humor seemed to have fled.

"Well, aren't you?"

"Do you talk this much at your master?" the Faceless sellsword snapped. "You are making my head ache!"

"I will be as quiet as a little grey mouse if you merely answer my questions," the Cat promised.

"A row boat seemed like such a good idea at the time," the master grumbled, noting that there was nowhere to go so that he might escape her pestering. "Alright, _fine_. I'll tell you the source of the _antipathy,_ as you call it. But the rest is not mine to tell."

She nodded her agreement and awaited his answer.

"When I am done, I will expect you to finish your account of your adventures with the wealthy man, and _then,_ little wolf, I will expect you to keep your mouth shut until we are on dry land and I can leave you behind if I feel the need."

She snickered but said, "Agreed."

"For as far back as anyone knows, those who would be acolytes of the House of Black and White have wandered into the temple, or been deposited there perhaps. They have run, crawled, stumbled, or been drug through the ebony and weirwood doors, not knowing what they would find on the other side. Those who show promise and a willingness to learn are allowed to stay and train. Masters who are not abroad on missions will agree who among them is best suited for a particular acolyte and will act as a primary mentor."

"All this I know," the girl sighed impatiently. "I _am_ an acolyte, remember? I came to the temple in exactly this way!"

"But you _didn't_ ," he shot back. "You _didn't_ come in exactly that way, and that is the point!"

Confusion marred the Cat's false features. She raised her eyebrows and looked at the Faceless sellsword, not understanding.

" _You_ were chosen," he continued, giving her a meaningful look, as if his words had cleared everything up.

The apprentice's brow furrowed deeper, and her nose even wrinkled a bit as she stared at the handsome man. He didn't seem to have anything to add, though, and she was unable to contain herself any longer.

"Am I meant to understand that?" she half-laughed, half-groaned.

"How many iron coins do you think Faceless Men have given to ragged little children who are lost and wandering in distant lands? How many orphans do you suppose were _invited_ to come to the temple by a master assassin? Would you care to make a guess as to how many high-born ladies have ever been plucked from obscurity and set on the path you are on?"

"So?"

" _So_ , the order has a tradition. _Hundreds_ of years. _Thousands_ of assassins. And it has all happened the same way, each time. Until _you_."

The Cat was still confused, not understanding why her path to the temple was such a problem for the handsome man, but her confusion was outweighed by something else. She felt _overwhelmed_ as she considered his words. She chewed her lower lip as she thought on what the handsome man had just said. According to the master, she was the first acolyte ever _chosen._ Jaqen had done something no Faceless Man had ever done: he had _chosen for himself._ She had never really thought of it that way before, always seeing him as her rescuer, never considering what role she played in _Jaqen's_ life. To her, that iron coin meant freedom and salvation. It was also a symbol of faith-her master's faith in _her;_ his belief that she was meant for _more_ than whatever life awaited her in Harrenhal or _after_ Harrenhal. But what did that coin mean to _him?_ Was it freedom for _him,_ too? The freedom to decide for himself who he would train; who he would accept into his brotherhood?

The girl began to smirk and then asked rather impertinently, "Are you upset because you got stuck with the Rat when you would have rather had _me_?"

"I am not _upset_ at all," he said, "but there is definitely a feeling among the faithful that your master interprets the laws of the order to his own advantage."

She could not tolerate the handsome man casting aspersions on Jaqen's devotion to the order. His faith was the most important thing to him; he was a _true believer_ ( _more devout_ _than most,_ she thought _. More devout than even the Kindly Man, from what she had seen_ ).

"It sounds... it sounds almost as if you're calling my master... some sort of... _cheat_ ," the girl said softly, menace coloring her voice at its edges. Her quiet, alert manner warned of the danger behind her words. Her left hand slowly moved to her thigh, gently rubbing the outline of the dagger that lay there.

The handsome man gave her a look that qualified as _scornful_ , and _his_ voice carried its own warning.

"Do not think to threaten me, _girl_. He was my brother long before he was your master. We have _history_."

"Does that give you some sacred right to malign his character?"

The handsome man threw his head back and laughed loudly, not seeming to care about the sleeping boy at his feet. Syrio opened his eyes blearily and blinked twice before laying his head back down again.

"I didn't think that it was his _character_ you were interested in, little wolf," the master spat after his bitter laughter died.

The Cat snorted slightly, remarking, "It seems that masters and their apprentices are not so different. Did you teach the Rat to disdain me as well? Is that why he has always harbored ill feelings towards me? Have I _you_ to thank for the years of animosity between my brother and me?"

"Him? No, he has his own reasons. And I don't disdain you, my girl. Far from it."

" _I'm not your girl_ ," she hissed.

"That's right. You're _not._ And there was never any chance that you _would_ be, because you arrived at the temple under a _Lorathi_ banner. You bought your way in with _iron_. You, Arya Stark, were never meant to be a Faceless Man, but he _took you_ from your world and placed you neatly in _his_. He chose for _himself_ , as no Faceless Man had ever done before and as no Faceless Man has done since, and it was just _forgiven._ Accepted without a word from the principal elder. No retribution. No admonishment. Not even a disapproving glance!"

The Cat processed all that was being said. The handsome man was obviously resentful of the favor Jaqen received just as the Rat seemed to resent the favor shown to the Cat. _But I earned my favor,_ she insisted to herself. _Just as Jaqen earned his._

"So... you're just jealous, then?" she finally asked.

"You asked about the root of the antipathy. Now you know what it is. I do not feel a need to entertain your asinine questions any further," the assassin remarked bitterly. "Finish your tale and then be silent. The sound of your voice is grating on me."

* * *

The vial of Sweetsleep the Cat had given to her brother was mostly full and though he perhaps should have paid closer attention to the waif's lessons, the Bear felt sure that if a drop or two was enough to send a large man into a deep slumber and a drop or two more beyond that was like to depress his respirations enough as to be dangerous, then putting ten drops into the wine and pressing it into Olive's hand with a plea to drink a sip so that she could steady her nerves for the discussion to come should have at least caused her eyelids to droop by now. He was not aware, of course, that the strength of the concoction had been weakened significantly.

So, despite Olive's one sip, her eyes were bright and her face hopeful as the Bear began to talk. He had decided he should proceed with his original plan, despite his master's recent words, and lay out his hopes for their future. The idea of saying it out loud caused his heart to clench painfully and he looked into the serving girl's face, hoping to discover any signs of joy at his words, or at least acceptance. _He so wanted her to be happy._

"You were always too clever for your own good, my love," he told her ruefully. "You figured me out, even though I thought I was so cautious and clever."

"You _are_ clever, Willem!" the girl insisted, grasping his hand and pressing it to her bosom. It wasn't a lusty gesture but one of comfort. The boy was obviously out of sorts and it distressed her to see him flounder.

"Olive, you _know_ who I am... _what_ I am," the boy began with a sigh.

"I know you are _my love_ , and that is all that matters to me, Willem," she whispered, clutching his hand harder as if she was afraid that he might slip away from her. He could feel her heart hammering beneath his hand and he knew she was frightened of what he might say to her then. _It was almost laughable. As if words could truly hurt. People always said that, though. Words hurt. Words cut. Those people had never had their flesh peeled from their body with a blade. Words didn't hurt, sharp steel hurt. It might be poetic to talk about the harm words could do, but the weight of ten thousand harsh words couldn't approximate the damage to a soft throat of even one small knife._

They sat on the edge of Olive's bed, angled towards each other, his left knee touching her right. The wench was as alert as she had ever been and the Bear wondered briefly if perhaps her excitable state meant she would require _more_ of the Sweetsleep to obtain the desired effect. He commented on her pounding heart, causing her to laugh with mild embarrassment and blush a little.

"Have another sip of wine, Olive," he urged. "It will settle you."

"But Willem, I poured that for you. I don't want to deprive you..."

"My sweet, my nerves are fine. It's _yours_ that concern me. I won't be easy until I know _you_ are."

The girl nodded and gave him an adoring smile before taking another sip of the wine.

"As I was saying," the Lyseni continued, "you already know what I am, and so you must know of my obligations to my order."

The wench nodded her head, her expression now solemn.

"Faceless Men do not take wives, Olive," he explained so that she would understand. "We have no children. We cannot be bound by _anything_ so that we are free to do _everything,_ and go _everywhere._ "

The girl's solemn expression began to look crestfallen. This was obviously not what she was expecting to hear when he told her before the feast that he would have something to talk about upon his return.

"I can't forsake the order," he told her urgently, his voice a heated whisper. "I wouldn't, or I would be a man without honor, but also, I couldn't, because they would never allow it. And it wouldn't just be _my_ life that was in danger. It would be _yours,_ too."

Olive began to sniffle a little, but was trying very hard to be brave and let him speak. He could read the anguish in her eyes and in the single, fat teardrop that escaped her eye and rolled rapidly down her plump cheek. He closed his eyes tightly for a moment to gather his wits and pinched the bridge of his nose. The sharp pain of his fingernails digging into the flesh there helped him focus.

"You must know how much _respect_ I have for you. You must know that to me, it would not matter if you cleaned pig stalls for coin or if you were the grandest lady in the city, dressed in the most expensive silks. You _must know_ that what I say is because I can see no other way, and not because I do not love you as I ought. There is only you for me, Olive. You must know that..."

The girl bit her lip and nodded vigorously, tears beginning to spill in earnest now as she waited for him to say goodbye to her.

"So when I say what I have to say, please do not hate me Olive, because I couldn't bear it if you did. _I couldn't bear it..._ though perhaps I'd understand it."

"Willem," she said in a hitching whisper, " _oh, Willem!_ I couldn't hate you!"

He smiled a little sadly at that and, taking her face between his large hands, pulled her into a gentle kiss. He could feel her tears on his face, moistening his cheeks and he willed the bile that rose in the back of his throat to go down. He felt an almost incapacitating stab of remorse at the thought that he was the cause of all that was threatening her now.

The Bear broke their kiss, but continued holding her face, forcing her to look at him.

"Olive, I want you for my wife, but I cannot have you. They would not allow it, and if they ever got their hands on you..."

He shuddered violently as he thought of what would happen if Olive met her end at the hands of Faceless assassins who would use _her_ death as a punishment for _him._

"Shhh, it's okay," she said soothingly.

_She is comforting me? I cannot bear it! I am the worst person in the world!_ the boy lamented internally, and then exhorted himself to hurry and say what he had to say. First, he bade her sip again and she did. He noticed that her eyes were slightly duller and she looked like someone who was slowly wearing out. _Perhaps Sweetsleep is much slower and gentler than I thought. I really should have paid more attention to the waif._

"Olive, I want you for my wife, but since I cannot marry you, I want you for my paramour. I could keep you hidden. I could keep you safe."

The girl's sadness immediately transformed into befuddlement.

"What?" she gasped.

He mistook her surprise for offense and quickly moved to explain himself.

"I _know,_ " he said, "it's so much less than you deserve. But If you were willing to wait for me between assignments that took me out of Braavos for a time, I could still provide for you. I could make you comfortable. And I would love you with the whole of my heart. When I was away, I would dream of nothing but you, and when I was here, which could be quite a lot, actually, I could spend my free time with you. We would have to be careful, of course, but it's not marriage, so I don't see how they could object. We'd have to have moon tea... lots of moon tea..."

"Willem!" the girl cried.

"I know, I'm stupid. I'm so stupid," the acolyte moaned. "How could I expect you to give up a chance at real marriage, and children? I'm selfish and stupid. Please don't hate me!"

He buried his face in his hands and Olive reached for him, wrapping him tightly in her arms.

"I already told you, Willem, I _couldn't_ hate you. So quit saying you're stupid. I won't stand for you insulting the man I love, not for one more instant!" the girl said sternly. Then her voice softened and she added, "I would follow you to the edge of the world if you asked it of me. How could I hate you when you've made me so happy? I will wait for you, my love."

The large apprentice pulled away from his lover's embrace to study her face, looking for any sign she was playing him false, but her eyes were shiny with tears and sincerity and he nearly toppled her over as he pressed fervent kisses on her forehead, her cheeks, her chin, her neck, her lips, and any other uncovered bit of skin he could reach. Soon, they were laughing and crying at once, kissing each other and embracing and acting like the fools in love that they were. After a few minutes of this, Olive tried in vain to suppress a yawn.

"I've kept you too long awake," the boy said, suddenly sad again. "Lay your head down, my sweet. I'll stay with you until you're asleep."

"Oh, Willem," the girl sighed softly, yawning again. "You are good to me."

"Not nearly as good as you deserve, Olive."

She smiled at him and closed her eyes as the boy carefully covered her. He placed a kiss upon her brow and sat on the edge of her bed, watching as she drifted off into peaceful sleep and breathed deeply and evenly. He sat there for a long time, watching her like that and pretending. He was waiting for her to slow her breathing, but she never did. His heart sank as he realized that the Sweetsleep was not working as he had hoped. He raised his eyes towards Olive's ceiling, silently pleading to his god for succor. Finding none, his mind filled with thoughts of what would happen to her if he failed in his mission, and what would happen to him, and what would happen to his sister and his body began to shake with silent sobs, tears steadily streaming down his face and his neck, wetting the simple, clean ruffle of his beautiful shirt. Drawing in a great breath, the boy eased Olive's pillow out from under her head slowly and carefully. She did not stir and he thought _at least the Sweetsleep was good for that much._ He looked at the wench's face one last time before he covered it with her pillow and pressed with all his strength.

"Goodbye, my love," he whispered and his voice carried enough sorrow for a thousand lifetimes. " _Valar morghulis_."

* * *

It had been quiet for a good while when the two Faceless brothers heard the door next to theirs open and close. They heard soft footsteps begin to descend the stairs and then stop.

"We should go check," the stern-faced brother said to the Lorathi.

Jaqen nodded his assent and the two rose from their spots, walking toward the door that would lead them to the passageway. Jaqen exited first, seeing as he did the top of the large acolyte's bowed head as the boy sat on the steps leading to the common room. The Bear's master noted the boy's presence and then looked at Jaqen. They seemed to understand each other and swiftly made their way to Olive's door, quietly opening it and making a quick inspection of her room. The girl's head was resting in the center of her pillow, her dark curls arranged as a frame around her face, her eyes open, mouth poised in the shape of an _O._ She appeared as if she were about to speak, but Jaqen knew she would never speak again. The stern-faced man rather superfluously checked the girl's pulse by placing his hand lightly on the side of her neck. After a brief moment, he gave a curt nod to the Lorathi assassin and the two exited the room, pulling the door shut silently.

"There is much work to do," Jaqen murmured.

"If you will take him back to the temple, I will see to the rest," his brother returned.

"Are you certain, brother? Perhaps you ought to be the one to accompany your apprentice..."

"No. I was the one who gave him the instruction. He will need time to understand. It is better if you go."

"Just so," Jaqen agreed, seeing the wisdom in his brother's words and also glad that he would not need to assist the stern-faced man in the tasks left to him. It was not the Lorathi's place to judge, judgment was for Him of Many Faces, but still... he did not relish the thought of cleaning up the mess at the inn, no matter how necessary. Also, he was eager to return to the temple, hoping to hear that his lovely girl had returned and anxious to know that she was not seriously harmed by the wealthy man before he finally succumbed to death.

Without further discussion, the Lorathi master moved down the stairs until he drew even with the Lyseni apprentice. Jaqen refrained from offering his congratulations. Instead, he issued a simple command.

"Come."

The boy rose slowly and obeyed, his eyes cast down towards his feet. He followed Jaqen silently down the stairs and the two passed swiftly through the empty common room and through the front doors of the inn. The Bear knew he would never come to this place again, but he did not bother to look around. There was nothing left there for him anymore. All that had made the inn special was gone, the memories sullied.

The pair moved in the shadows, their feet carrying them ever closer to the House of Black and White where the priests and principal elder awaited them (and also awaited the Kindly Man's most beloved acolyte). The two were quiet until they had crossed the bridge over the long canal. At last, Jaqen spoke, hoping to provide some comfort to the boy and perhaps help him realize that his morose mood would not be pleasing to those who awaited them in the temple.

"In the end, death comes for all men anyway. _Valar morghulis,_ " Jaqen said softly. "You did the right thing."

"It's not as if I had a choice," the apprentice growled, and though his voice was soft, the Lorathi could hear the boy's anger.

"There is always a choice," the older assassin countered. "Obedience is a _choice_."

"Yes, but for Olive, my choice made no difference. She was dead either way. But I would think _you_ , of _all_ people, would realize that the choice was no choice at all."

"A man does not understand what you mean."

"Oh? Well, I'll enlighten you, master. I was presented with two options. The first was for the girl I love to die by my hand. The second was for the girl I love to die by the hand of a Faceless master, slowly, perhaps even over days, and all the while, I would be forced to watch. And _then,_ once she was gone, I would get to watch my _friend,_ who also happens to be _your apprentice,_ die in the same way. And, after all that, they would kill me. I suppose it would be a mercy by then, like putting down an injured dog. So, you see, you'll have to forgive me for not falling over myself to express gratitude for this _choice_ I was so generously offered."

The boy was bitter and devastated, though the words _bitter_ and _devastated_ were not truly strong enough to describe how the Lyseni felt at that moment. But Jaqen could not be concerned with him. All he had heard was that the order had used the threat of torture and death against his lovely girl as further inducement to force the Bear to do their bidding.

_Surely the threat was not serious. Surely the principal elder was not truly prepared to carry out such an act. It was a trick. It had to be._

"Who told you this thing?" the Lorathi demanded.

"My _master_ ," the boy spat. "And he is not known for his sense of humor."

" _Come!_ " the Faceless Man barked, quickening his pace. He felt the pressing need to reach the temple and be assured that Arya was safe.

* * *

As Jaqen and the Bear were walking through the front doors of the temple, the Cat and the handsome man had finally pulled their small vessel onto the muddy bank at the Western edge of Ragman's Harbor. The girl woke up their orphan passenger and told him to follow her.

"Keep that blanket over you," the master growled at her.

"Humph," she groused. "Around here, it would be more unusual to see someone out this late who _wasn't_ covered in blood!"

Despite her ill-temper (which was mostly a reaction to the handsome man's ill-temper), she obeyed his order and clutched the edges of the scratchy, dark wool together at her neck with one hand as she used the other to hold onto Syrio's small hand and lead him toward the temple. When they finally arrived at the steps leading to the black and white doors, the girl felt a flush a relief that surprised her. _Just a few paces away from safety,_ she thought, bounding up the steps and dragging Syrio behind her, passing Owen as she went. She fairly flew through the doors expecting to be greeted by the Kindly Man. She was bursting to tell him of her success (part of her still craving his good opinion even as she felt her mistrust of him growing), but she was instead met by the waif who informed her that others had arrived before her and they commanded the elder's attention just then.

"Come with me now," the tiny woman said, "and I shall relieve you of this troublesome face."

"What about the boy?" the Cat asked, reluctant to leave Syrio.

"Oh, I'm sure my brother will see to him," the waif said, looking past the apprentice and into the eyes of her brother. The handsome man nodded, asking Syrio if he was hungry.

" _Starving!_ " the boy declared.

"Let's go see what Umma left lying about in her kitchen, shall we? Then I'll find you a soft bed. _Mattine_ will get you back to your home tomorrow."

The curly-headed boy followed the Faceless master like an trusting puppy. Little Syrio walked down the wide corridor, past statue after statue, looking at them in awe as he grew smaller and smaller in the Cat's sight and finally disappeared through a door that would lead him to the back hallway and the kitchen.

"Now that he's taken care of, you come with me," the waif commanded imperiously, and the Cat followed the small woman into the temple and then down a different hallway; one that led to a stairwell that eventually brought the pair into the lower chamber which functioned as the repository of thousands of faces kept by the order.

"Shall we put _Mattine_ to rest?" the waif asked. The girl merely nodded, taking her place on a low stool so that the waif could do her work more easily. When the Cat saw the flash of the small knife, she felt the blood rush to her head, as she always did, no matter how many times she went through this. There was just something about allowing another person to put a knife that close to the large veins and arteries in her neck that did not sit well with the Cat. She closed her eyes, trying to appear calm, trying to _be_ calm, and felt the slight pricking at the edges of her face. After a few minutes of mild discomfort, she heard the waif's voice.

"There," the woman said. "Mattine is gone. You are yourself once again."

"I am _no one_ ," the Cat replied automatically.

"Just so," the waif murmured with a sly smile.

* * *

_**Row, Row, Row Your**_ _**Boat**_ **-** kindergarteners everywhere

_**The Unforgiven-**_ Metallica (The Bear)

_**Let's Go For a Ride-**_ Cracker

_**Send the Pain Below**_ -Chevelle


	49. Chapter 49

 

_...and the grand façade, so soon will burn_

* * *

When the waif had peeled Mattine's face from the Cat, it wasn't just her look that changed, but her mood along with it. All of Mattine's grief and anger, which the apprentice had assimilated and learned to live with over the past days and weeks, were gone, all at once. The Cat felt a sudden _lightness_ then as those borrowed emotions (which had weighed heavily upon her) vanished in an instant and she was filled with a certain _joyfulness_ which was foreign to her (even during those times when she wore her own face). She felt as if she had been a prisoner, physically bound for so long that she had lost the feeling in her limbs and then those bonds were abruptly cut and she was free. She vibrated with new energy and exulted over her liberation. Improved though her state of mind was, however, the sudden change in mood left her feeling unsettled and edgy, bestowing upon her a sort of wary nervousness. It was akin to the feeling of _being watched;_ as if she could feel each of the fine hairs of her neck standing up, one by one. She was discomfited by the sensation and the dim chamber where the waif had done her work on the Cat's face rapidly became close and pressing to the girl. She needed to leave. She needed _air_. The girl scratched and rubbed vigorously at her own throat and arms in an attempt to assuage the almost painful tingling of her skin. The waif gave the apprentice a knowing look before she turned away swiftly and walked to the other side of the chamber.

"You wore this face for a long while," the tiny master explained as she hung the leathery thing on a small hook embedded in the stone wall. "It will take you a little while to adjust to simply _not being_ Mattine."

The Cat nodded, seeming to understand, but continued her agitated movements. She told herself to stop, but was unable to make herself obey. The waif approached her, examining the acolyte's true face with a critical eye.

"Does it hurt?" she asked the Cat as her small fingers grazed the girl's broken lip and the bruised area just beneath her eye, assessing the injuries Syrio had dealt the girl at her own command. Mattine's face had actually absorbed most of the damage but some of it was still apparent on the apprentice's flesh.

"Not really," the girl replied with a shrug. "Especially now that Mattine's face is off."

"Hmm. Still, I think we should repair what we can," the waif decided, pulling a jar of dark, sticky stuff from the folds of her robe. Without a word, she smeared it onto the Cat's wounded flesh. It was a thick, cold salve, and it smelled sweet, like Umma's fig jam. "There. That should do. Leave it on for at least half an hour."

As the waif finished instructing her, the girl could feel the skin of her face begin to tingle and burn. It wasn't painful, but it was _almost_ painful. The sensation only added to her general agitation and she found she could no longer sit still in the repository. The Cat felt as if the walls were closing in on her and her vision began to go dark around its edges.

"I think I need some air," she finally said. "It's so damp in here, and hot. It's hot and damp and dark..."

She was rambling like an idiot, she knew, but her behavior did not seem to trouble the waif, who merely nodded and dismissed her with a wave of her tiny hand, saying, " _Valar morghulis._ "

" _Valar dohaeris_ ," the acolyte returned before she sprang up from her stool and bolted for the door. She raced down the passageway and up the stairs until she came out on the uppermost level of the temple. Her feet carried her along the familiar route to the rear garden door without her having to think about her movements, her body able to find the way almost unconsciously, moving independently from her mind. As she passed through the door and into the cool night air, she was overwhelmed with a sense of relief and slowed her pace, wondering almost deliriously if she would run into her master and the Kindly Man there. _Surely the two of them would be in the garden, as usual,_ the girl thought with a small snort. Weren't they forever having some conversation which she was never meant to hear? The courtyard garden was deserted, however, and the only sounds to be heard were the gentle splashing of the fountain in the garden pool and the occasional rustle of the leaves of the lemon and fig trees in the soft night breeze.

The Cat moved toward the soothing sound of the fountain, able to see the rippling surface of the dark water in the moonlight. There was only half a moon, but the night was cloudless and so it gave out enough light to make her path grey rather than black beneath her feet. It was only when she paused at the lip of the raised fountain wall that she realized she was still wearing her fluttering, thin gown from Lord Atius, garishly stained with his blood across the bodice and upper skirts. She had not paused long enough in her flight from the repository to consider changing.

 _After I get some air,_ she told herself, breathing deeply and greedily. She tilted her head up towards the sky, letting the moonlight wash over her face, imagining she could feel a slight warming of her cheeks and chin and nose as she did. Concentrating on that phantom sensation helped her forget the burning in her fingertips as her hands remembered they belonged to _her_ and not _Mattine._ It also distracted her enough so that she did not recoil from the now unfamiliar brush of heavy, silken hair lying heavily against her back where she had been so recently accustomed to the bounce of springy, coarse curls tickling her. She wondered if her problems adjusting to her own skin were because she had worn Mattine's face longer than any other face she had been given before, or if it was due to the fact that Mattine's face was so... _fresh_. She resolved to ask Jaqen.

 _He will know_ , the Cat determined, taking some comfort from her own certainty of her master's expertise, but then she bit her lip and cast her eyes to the waters of the garden pool, watching the diamond slivers of moonlight flicker and flash on the tiny ripples moving across the surface. She recalled with a sinking feeling that she had been forbidden to speak with her master, at least until after she had completed her trial.

_Obedience is a choice. And disobedience has consequences. For all involved._

She would have to save her question, and much else, the Cat realized with disappointment.

It was so infuriating! She had not even been given a reason! Not that the Kindly Man needed to explain himself to her, as he had told her numerous times throughout the years. She had learned to stop asking the principal elder for justification of his judgments and directives because she did not like the sour look he gave her as he pointed out that he owed her _nothing_. Of course, when she thought about it, the Cat recognized that she _had_ an explanation for this particular commandment of the elder's. He had not answered her when she had pressed him as to the _why_ of his edict, at least not precisely, but he had given her enough so that she could assume the reason...

 _"Why must I abandon my master?"_ the girl recalled asking the principal elder the night she had found him waiting for her mentor in Jaqen's own chamber.

 _"We are here to serve the will of Him of Many Faces, not to satiate our own foolish desires,"_ she remembered he had admonished her.

_"Is it a foolish desire to wish to complete the last days of training with the teacher who set me on this path?"_

_"That is not the foolish desire to which I was referring."_

The girl's cheeks burned at the recollection. Somehow, the Kindly Man had perceived in her the longing she felt for her own master, even at a time when she had barely recognized it in herself. _And not just perceived it,_ she thought, biting her lip once again and tasting the waif's sickly sweet poultice on her tongue, _but reproved it as well, however gently._ How had he known? Was she so poor at concealing her feelings? And if the _elder_ knew that much after one brief interaction, what had _Jaqen_ read in her face? Her voice? Her eyes? She cringed to think of it. Maybe her master was _pleased_ with the principal elder's edict that they spend time apart. The Lorathi might even be relieved that he did not have to endure her shy, admiring glances; _her poorly concealed... want._ He might be grateful to be given a reprieve from the uncomfortable evidence of her silly desires. With all else going on in the temple, the girl didn't have time for her own foolishness, so how could she expect Jaqen to agree to take it on?

 _You don't know what he might agree to take on,_ her little voice insisted. _You're too craven to ask him._

 _It's not craven to be realistic and to have some pride!_ she told herself.

 _It's craven to never take a chance for something you truly want,_ the voice countered, then tacked on, _and you want_ him.

 _What I_ want _is for you to shut up._

The Cat felt foolish for standing alone in the dark garden and berating herself. The events of the night had been far more consequential than her laughable argument with her little voice about what Jaqen _might or might not_ feel for her ( _he does not feel what I feel,_ she told herself once again, hoping to put an end to this internal argument and buy herself some peace from the little voice's haranguing), yet the question seemed to plague her to distraction.

"Think on the _mission_ ," she whispered out loud, forcing her mind to recall the events of the night. She expected to be filled with a sense of satisfaction; a grim joy at her own success. Instead, all she felt was confusion. _What had Biro meant about his children? Had he really been responsible for Hellind's death?_

She _knew_ that she should not care; that the wealthy man's death was prayed for and it was accomplished. His demise was a gift to Him of Many-Faces, sanctioned and sanctified. There did not have to be a reason for it and if there _was_ a justification, she did not have to be privy to it; that she had been given the task by her order was enough; that it was prayed for was enough; that it was the will of her god was enough.

_Should have been enough._

_But when the Cat had thought there was a reason for Biro's death, a reason she could understand and support, it had somehow contented her; it had made her feel righteous. Having that reason stolen from her disturbed her more than she cared to admit._ Being Faceless wasn't about needing a justification beyond honoring the Many-Faced god and the willingness to do his bidding without question, yet the Cat had reveled in the idea of delivering Hellind's justice (and Syrio's, and Olive's, and Mattine's) to the wealthy man. To learn that it might not be justice after all had shaken her and, consequently, thinking on the details of her mission and on Biro's death was not providing her with the comfortable distraction she sought after her unsettling thoughts about Jaqen.

_About her own feelings for Jaqen._

She looked at her arms and could faintly make out the blood which painted one. _Lord Atius' blood, long since gone cold and dry._ It gave her arm the appearance of wearing a long, dark sleeve or a glove pulled past her elbow. She suddenly felt a need to be free of it; could not stand to have the stuff on her for a second longer. She dropped to her knees by the fountain and plunged her arm into the cool water there, scrubbing hard at her skin, raking at it with her fingernails.

 _You cannot wash away your guilt so easily,_ her little voice whispered.

 _I do not feel guilt,_ she returned and scrubbed harder.

From somewhere deep inside of her, her little voice just laughed.

* * *

"This acolyte has done what was asked of him," Jaqen attested to his own master. "He has completed the task he was given. A man witnessed the aftermath."

The Kindly Man turned to the Bear, his face solemn as he told the boy, "Only death may pay for life. This has been known for as long as there has been memory. The lives you will live as a Faceless Man, and the faces you will use to live those lives, have been bought and paid for."

The Bear was silent, merely bowing his head. What could he say? He hadn't done it to earn his face, yet that was the final result. Olive's blood had paid the price and purchased his entry into the brotherhood.

The principal elder was saying something about severing attachments to self and the past, but the boy could not focus on the words, so buried was he under his heavy grief. He mastered his face admirably, however, and all that showed was a blank expression while the Kindly Man continued talking about the importance of letting go of that which tethers oneself to a limited, ordinary life. In making such a sacrifice and in delivering the very blood which was precious to him as a gift to his god, the Lyseni acolyte had earned his place among the order. Some words were mumbled, ancient words that sealed the Bear's ability to change his face at will, and then the ceremony was over.

When Jaqen looked up, he noticed that his handsome, smirking brother had slipped into the chamber at some point during the proceedings. His presence was fitting and even expected, as all masters were present during the ceremonies inducting the apprentices, unless duty called them away (as the Bear's master had been, busy as he was at the inn still). The Lorathi expertly suppressed his smile as he recognized that the arrival of the _handsome man_ in the temple likely indicated that his lovely girl had returned as well. Jaqen's demeanor was calm and staid, his face betraying nothing of his eagerness to see the girl with his own eyes, to hear her tale of her mission, and, most of all, to assure himself that she had indeed returned to him unharmed.

_And to guarantee that she would remain unharmed now that she was once again within the menacing walls of the House of Black and White._

The Lorathi master understood very well the large acolyte's sense of loss resulting from the death that had awarded him his face, so he did not smile or congratulate him as the Bear left the room with the principal elder, likely to receive further instruction or an assignment which would complete his trial. Rather, he nodded to the boy and told him, " _Valar morghulis._ " The Bear nodded back, the inclination of his head barely perceptible. The Lyseni would need time, Jaqen knew, but he was not sure the Kindly Man would be willing to give it to the boy.

As Jaqen was about to leave the chamber himself, the handsome man caught his brother by his arm and prevented him from departing. After bowing his head slightly in greeting, the newly arrived master moved closer to the Lorathi and spoke softly near his ear.

"Your girl has brought home a stray," the handsome man told Jaqen in a low voice.

"Oh?" the Lorathi replied, giving his brother a marginally indifferent look. He wondered if this was just a ploy of the handsome man's meant to delay him from seeing his apprentice.

"Yes, a little pot-boy she involved in her scheme at Biro's. She was positively _motherly_ with him," Jaqen's brother continued. "She would not allow me to leave him there."

"No doubt the girl feels a sense of loyalty to the boy for his aid."

"Most assuredly," the handsome man agreed, "but I wonder how _Tyto_ will feel about it?"

Jaqen looked sharply at his brother but remained silent. _Why was he invoking that name, here? Now?_ As the Lorathi master studied his brother's face, he saw it was decorated with his typical smirk, and his voice had remained low enough so that only the two of them could hear the words which passed between them.

"A man supposes you could ask him," Jaqen finally answered dismissively.

The handsome master shrugged, saying, "I think it might be more interesting to watch how things develop… _naturally._ I only wonder because I have seen first-hand how… _attached_ she can get to people."

Though he meant to imply something else entirely, the handsome man recalled then the conversation he and the girl had in Biro's gondola.

 _"You are very attached to him," he_ _had said, meaning to unsettle her as he implied she was enamored with her Lorathi mentor._

_"Aren't most apprentices attached to their masters?" the girl had replied, not giving him the satisfaction of seeing her squirm, her little chin pointing higher in defiance._

_She is so young, the Faceless sellsword had thought then, his mouth almost involuntarily forming a half smile. She does not see the effect she is having on my brother._

_"Indeed. And now that I am your master, how do you think we will fare, little wolf?"_

They had fared rather well, the handsome man thought, despite her appalling tendency to attach herself to the _wrong people._

Here, his smirk turned into a grin, with perhaps a bit of wickedness behind it. Jaqen knew his brother was implying something that was supposed to bother him. The handsome man obviously wanted to convince the Lorathi assassin that his lovely girl was somehow held in his smirking brother's sway, but the game retained little appeal for the Cat's master just then. Rising to this grinning brother's bait would only create more tension and things were tense enough since the girl had been placed under the handsome man's supervision. Besides, if this smug master thought _Arya_ had grown so attached to him during their brief time together in the manse that she wouldn't bury a knife in him ( _again_ ) if the situation called for it, he did so at his own peril. Jaqen himself had warned the girl about how dangerous this brother could be; how his dedication to the order outweighed all other loyalties; how his playfully arrogant demeanor served to conceal the true level of his skill at _killing_ people. Her sense of self-preservation was greater than any regard she _may_ have developed for this smirking assassin.

_Wasn't it?_

"Fortunately, despite all their... hmm... _close contact_ , the girl did _not_ grow attached to Atius Biro," the handsome man continued, seemingly oblivious to Jaqen's consternation. "It really is too bad you couldn't be there to see your apprentice ply her trade, brother. Even though I _was_ there to witness her work, I still found her cleverness surprising at times."

"Her plan was her own," the Lorathi assassin admitted. "She did not desire a man's help when deciding how to handle this wealthy lord."

The Cat's master smiled to himself then, recalling how the girl had wished to prove herself to him; to show him that she was capable of solving her own problems and completing a mission independently.

"I had wondered about that initially," Jaqen's brother said, "but assumed that to be the case when she didn't mention you as she recounted her deeds to me tonight."

The handsome man paused, looking at his brother's expression before he continued, explaining, "We were alone for hours in a boat, so she had plenty of time to discuss her mission... _and other things_."

"Alone?" the Lorathi asked, feigning confusion. "A man thought you said the girl brought a _stray_ home. A little pot-boy, you said. Was he not also on this boat?"

"Well, yes," the handsome master acquiesced a bit weakly, "but he was asleep the entire time. The whole adventure had simply exhausted him, so it was easy to forget he was even there."

"Ah, a man sees. His brother merely _felt_ as if he were alone with a girl," the Lorathi responded, his tone indicating how little he thought of his brother's attempt to rouse in him some jealousy.

"She was masterful, really, if a bit _naïve_ ," the handsome man continued, referring to the way the Cat carried out her mission in the manse. He ignored Jaqen's scornful tone. "I only hope I was able to disabuse her of some of that... _childish innocence_."

Here, Jaqen placed his arms across his chest and looked at his brother with an air of irritated expectancy. He knew the handsome man would not give such a glancing hit without some sort of intention to deliver a second blow, but the Lorathi would be damned if he was going to _ask_ for it.

"I suppose it was sweet, in a way," the smirking assassin continued blithely, "how she thought nothing could touch her and believed no harm could come to her. The girl felt that her own skills were enough to keep her safe in any situation that could have befallen her in the wealthy man's household. Her over-confidence was _adorable_ even if it was a bit dangerous. Did you teach her that?"

Jaqen frowned at his brother but said nothing, not wanting to interrupt this mummer's farce. The handsome man was obviously building toward something and the Lorathi did not wish to prolong his brother's giddy delight in the revelation.

"Even when I _showed_ her how easy it would be for a stronger assailant to steal a kiss... and _more_ from her, I don't think she completely understood the danger she was in at the manse, though _that_ little lesson _did_ inspire her to take my instructions more seriously."

 _Instructions such as: don't allow yourself to be pinned in the first place_ and _gloat only after you have assured your victory._

 _It had also led to her discovery of his involvement in the canal incident,_ the handsome man thought wryly, but his _own_ sense of self-preservation kept him from baiting his brother with that particular piece of information just then.

Jaqen recognized that it was this stealing of a _kiss_ (and possibly something _more_ ) that his brother had been hoping to use to rile the Lorathi. He told himself not to react because he knew that was what the smug master wanted of him, but he found he was unable to ignore the jab completely.

"A man wonders if it was a lesson his brother was really after, or was it... _something more_."

"Oh, don't worry yourself brother," the handsome man replied, waving his hand dismissively at Jaqen. "I didn't do anything that the elders wouldn't approve of, and I think the girl is now less likely to underestimate the threat posed by those she deems less skilled than herself."

"A man does not worry, but he is most interested to hear his _apprentice's_ recounting of these events," the Lorathi retorted dangerously, and then continued in a voice near to a low growl, "before he decides whether or not the matter is _settled_."

The handsome man looked at his brother with a small smile that did not reach his eyes. He bowed his head slightly to Jaqen, murmuring, "I look forward to learning of your _judgment,_ brother. I hope you will be as pleased by what your apprentice has to say about my instruction as I was to _have her under me. Valar morghulis_."

" _Valar dohaeris,_ " Jaqen returned without emotion, and then turned on his heel and left the chamber. Edict or no, he was determined to find his apprentice.

* * *

By the girl's internal count, it had been more than half an hour since she had left the repository and she was anxious to get the waif's sticky salve off of her skin. It was beginning to itch (a sure sign that it had worked). She sat on the edge of the garden pool and leaned over the water, bringing her face near the surface as she scooped up handfuls and used the cool liquid to scrub her face clean. As she did, the hand that had been lacerated when Biro stepped on it as she clutched at a shard of broken glass (still wrapped in the handsome man's handkerchief) began to throb. She ought to have asked the waif for some relief for _that_. The cut was healing well but all the rowing she had done earlier had caused the wound to ache a bit. She removed the handkerchief and rinsed it out in the pool, wrapping the injured palm with the wet cloth once again. The girl flexed her hand a bit, clenching and unclenching her fist around the cool handkerchief, finding some relief from her discomfort in this way.

As the Cat was soothing her small hurts and slowly adjusting to the feeling of _not_ being a wealthy man's cupbearer, her master was making his way through the temple, looking for her in all the likely places. He found the girl's chamber empty and undisturbed since her last visit there. He thought to check her brother's cell next door, knowing his lovely girl might desire to speak with her brother following her successful mission, but instead found only the curly-headed pot boy asleep in the freshly made bed that had been used by the rat-faced Westerosi until recently. Jaqen quickly scanned both the range room and the training room, knowing it would not be unusual to find the girl practicing with her weapons, even at this late hour. Discovering that both chambers were quiet and empty, he considered that the girl might have been hungry after rowing and peeked into Umma's domain. He had passed through the main temple chamber on his way to the kitchen, so he knew she was not currently offering her thanks to Him of Many Faces for a successful mission (he nearly laughed at the thought. The girl was a believer but was somewhat less worshipful than she ought to be).

 _Ah, the garden,_ the Lorathi realized. _Of course._

The idea that his lovely girl might be in the courtyard had not occurred to him immediately due to the late hour, but the night was clear and so there would be adequate moonlight to walk the paths if she was so inclined. He decided to check. Jaqen left the kitchen and exited the temple through the garden door, taking a moment to allow his eyes to adjust to the dim light. He followed the path around toward its bend quietly, feeling the beginnings of a sort of _anxiety_ slowly expanding from his middle and inching along until he was nearly seized with it. _Why would a man's nerves be disturbed?_ he wondered as he moved along the dark stone walkway. He could posit no clear answer but found there was a jumble of ideas bouncing around the inside of his skull, creating a tumult he could not calm or organize and as he considered each half-formed thought, his pulse quickened. His brother's words to him just recently, the idea that there was some sort of _kiss_ between the girl and the handsome master, a bit of worry about her well-being, the willful defiance of his own master's command to refrain from just this sort of contact with the girl, uncertainty about her reaction regarding the Bear's recent activities and the part her master had played in them, his apprentice's own quickly approaching trial, his recent acceptance of the truth of his feelings about the girl... The Lorathi assassin's consideration of all these things served to deprive him of his serenity and his concentration.

 _A man has not been at peace since he returned from Westeros,_ he thought, but then was forced to admit that his trouble had begun before that. He had found it hard to leave his apprentice behind for that particular mission and she had been much on his mind during his travels through her homeland. When he thought on it, he realized that when he had stayed her hand and prevented her from cutting her own hair with her dagger in this very courtyard, he was already on his way to being lost. He just did not know it yet.

 _How ironic that it was her_ Kindly Man's _suggestion that Jaqen had heeded when he admonished the girl to allow her hair to grow, for it had been the principal elder's recommendation to the Lorathi that he advise his apprentice to start wearing her hair long. At the time, it had seemed a tactical decision of unquestionable practicality. Now, he recognized that it was the first time during her training in Braavos that he had looked at the girl as anything more than the perfect instrument and a kindred, dark soul. Surely the elder could not have foreseen that outcome._

As Jaqen rounded the bend of the garden path, he saw the girl outlined by the moonlight which filtered into the courtyard. She was sitting on the edge of the low wall that surrounded the garden pool, her back to him, but as he stopped moving and watched her, she stood up and moved further away from him, to a spot just beyond the fountain. She was wearing that dress again, the one meant to reveal Mattine's form to a man who no longer had eyes to covet it. It was on his lips to jape with her about it, to call out to her and offer her some assistance with removing the offending garment, but the words died on his lips as he took her in. Her white shoulders shone in the moonlight, smooth and perfect to his eyes. Her long hair flowed darkly down her back, but despite the way it hid her flesh beneath its silken wave he could see the gentle curve of her frame; the places where her waist dipped in on each side; the way her back was laid bare by the open cut of the gown. Mattine was gone, and what was left was all _her;_ Arya as she had been created; as she had grown and _become,_ not some identity she wore as a costume or a disguise.

She looked so small standing there in the dark of the garden, and he felt a compelling and unassailable urge to put his arms around her and press her close to him. It was that drive to _protect_ her that the Lorathi did not invite and the girl did not welcome, but that he could not deny. He wanted very much just to _hold_ his lovely girl then and this thought filled his mind completely as he strode silently over the dark stone path toward his apprentice, obeying the irresistible pull of her. Jaqen's feet moved under their own power, requiring no direction from him. He could not have turned from her and walked away if his life had depended on his willingness to do so. And perhaps it did...

He did not care. He needed the feel of her beneath his hands.

_It was wrong._

_It could not be wrong._

_Right or wrong, the need consumed him._

"Welcome home, lovely girl," he purred when he was almost upon her. She turned around and, seeing him, allowed a slow smile form on her lips. Though he could not _see_ them well enough to say for sure, he was certain that he could _feel_ her eyes burning into him in the dim moonlight. _Ah,_ he thought, seeing her true face, _there you are._ Jaqen let his gaze trace the girl's length from those burning eyes down her long neck to the bodice of her once-white gown, now stained dark with Atius Biro's blood. The assassin stared intently at her, absorbing the sight fully, and it took him back to Harrenhal.

_A girl should be bloody, too. This is her work._

It seemed to him that she had learned that lesson wholly and wore Biro's blood upon her breast like some badge announcing to all who would behold her that she had done her work, and done it well.

The apprentice's look was at first _rapturous,_ reflecting her instinctive response to seeing her master once again, but then the girl appeared to be concerned. She did not wish to be caught defying the principal elder, he knew. She did not want to incur her _Kindly Man's_ wrath, either for herself or for her master. Jaqen sought to soothe her, not wishing to see that distressed look upon his lovely girl's true face for a second longer.

He closed the short distance between them and leaned over her, his arms wrapping themselves around her slender frame as he kissed the top of her head, inhaling her scent, his nostrils filling with clover warmed by sunshine and steel and snow and _joy joy joy_. She was home, and she was unharmed. He kissed her forehead then, savoring the feel of her true flesh beneath his lips, silken and smooth and so cool. Without stopping to think, Jaqen placed his fingers under her chin and tilted her face upward so that he could place a kiss on the tip of her nose. The touch of his lips there was so light, so gentle that she barely felt more than the brush of his warm breath. It must have tickled; she gave him a small laugh coupled with a shiver. _Mercy,_ the assassin begged internally, almost unable to cope with the very _feel_ of her response to him. He felt her shudder beneath his hands and his eyes closed of their own volition as he slid his hands up her arms until they were resting on the bare flesh of her white shoulders.

A sensation stirred in Arya at her master's touch; a familiar twisting in her gut, but more... _just more._ Too much. She thought she might _die_ from it. Then she was _sure_ she was dying, because her heart was no longer beating. No, her heart _was_ beating, but _too fast_ ; too _hard_. It was that _feeling_ again! That feeling of _falling too far,_ like when she was a little girl at Winterfell, running from Jon and laughing and then _jumping._ Here she was, no longer a little girl, but still bracing for the crash (all while hoping... hoping to _fly!)_ Without meaning to, she held her breath and soon, the acolyte actually felt dizzy and so had to let the breath go. The action did not clear her head as she had wished it to, and so she drew in another halting breath, her lips parting slightly to allow her to drink in the air. She was certain that if she did not, she would faint; she would _suffocate_. Oh, _gods_ , she was suffocating! She tried to be subtle so Jaqen would not see her desperate panting; would not hear; would not suspect her absurd reaction to him. She closed her eyes in a futile attempt to stave off the light-headedness she was feeling and breathed raggedly through that small opening formed by her mouth.

Jaqen saw the small movement of Arya's lips and perceived the slight parting of them. It was all the invitation he needed and more enticement than he capable of resisting. As he watched her eyelids flutter closed, he could not stop himself.

_Would not stop himself._

He gave in to his impulse.

Slowly, carefully, gently, _gently_ , Jaqen leaned down and brought his mouth to hers, trapping her lower lip between his own two, kissing her so softly, so very, very slowly...

_Not slow enough._

The Cat jerked away from him unsteadily, pressing the back of her hand against her lips to stifle her gasp, her grey eyes wide with shock. He could read in her expression the surprise and disbelief that the girl was unable to curb. The Lorathi immediately regretted giving in to his selfish whim and felt a sudden and terrible guilt at having scared her. A mixture of crushing disappointment and remorse washed over the master and he quickly tried to repair the damage he had done.

"A man is so sorry, lovely girl," he started in a low, hoarse whisper. "That was not meant to..."

Jaqen had intended to say, "That was not meant to frighten you," but his words were interrupted by the girl he was attempting to reassure, and before he could finish his apology, his apprentice had thrust herself, almost violently, back into his arms; arms which closed around her instinctively, drawing her nearer, pinning her solidly to him. His grasp was firm and _this time,_ the Lorathi found he was unwilling to let her go. She clutched at his neck and his hair, her fingers alternating between sliding and grasping roughly as the girl pulled her master's face insistently down to her own. He could feel the slim length of her, her lithe form pressed against him as she stood on her toes to reach his mouth, hanging onto him fiercely with her arms now locked tightly around his neck. Her outline was melting into him through the gauzy material of this gown that he had hated; this gown that he now loved, bloody and revealing and so very, very thin, letting him feel her contours and the cool press of her skin against his own. The girl's mouth met her master's in a frenzied crash as she forced his half-spoken words back inside of him, her lips bearing down against his so harshly that the tender flesh of his lower lip was caught by her teeth, leaving it pinched and marked. His startled and pained cry was muffled by her _teeth_ , her _lips_ , her _tongue_...

 _Her tongue;_ the tongue he had teased her about so often, that she had teased him _with_ once before (he imagined then that he could feel her again tracing the scars on his neck with it, a memory that had taunted him repeatedly since the time the girl had entered his chamber in her wet shift, seeking answers he was unable to give her). Here, she used her tongue inexpertly to demand his kiss; his attention. She seemed to be desperately trying to devour him and when he attempted to gently push her back from him (to speak to her, to look at her, to teach her, to slow her pace and stop her from drawing blood), she was having none of it. He gave in and stopped trying to move her away, just her closeness enough to incite his deep yearning for her and win his unequivocal capitulation, even with her clumsy and chaotic kissing. She was all instinct and no finesse; all passion and no temperance; all wildness and no discipline. It was amusing, and it was delightful, and it was so very, very alluring.

It was _enslavement._

He was powerless to regain his freedom and did not _wish_ to.

As the Lorathi assassin surrendered completely to Arya's direction and control, he let out a deep, involuntary groan. The sound startled her and she jerked back from him once again.

"Oh, gods, did I hurt you?" the girl asked him breathlessly, looking concerned.

"Yes, lovely girl," he chuckled, running his tongue over the small wound on his lip, a souvenir of her teeth carelessly crashing against him, "but that is not why a man groans."

The girl looked confused at his words, and then suddenly, she was all apologies and embarrassment, having trouble meeting his eyes.

 _The kiss... His kiss was such a gentle, tender thing,_ she realized. _I only read into it the passion and feeling... it did not mean... He was just... greeting me... happy I was successful, and home, safe..._

The apprentice was not privy to her master's thoughts, and so she had no way of knowing that his kiss was just a _hint_ of what he ultimately wanted from her; just the barest whisper of his feelings, delivered precisely at that moment because he could no longer stand to _not_ be kissing her for one more second but which he now hoped would reveal to him if she recognized and returned his sentiment.

Her master waited for understanding to replace the confusion he saw in the girl's face. It did not, and soon, her mask descended; the wall that hid the acolyte's traumatized little soul from all that might do her harm; the gift bestowed upon her by the order; the talent of _ruling her face._ Jaqen reached out and cupped her pale, expressionless face in his hands; her beautiful face; _that face that he loved._ He did not wish to see her don her armor; _not with him_. He did not want her to disappear. He could not stand to see fear direct her behavior. He would not allow her to fear _him._

"A man will not hurt you, lovely girl," he murmured. "Do not hide from him."

The girl turned her eyes up toward him, and it may have been a trick of the light, but the assassin thought they were shiny with unshed tears.

 _That cannot be,_ he decided quickly. _A girl does not cry except in times of overwhelming grief, and not always then._

He lowered his head to hers, pressing their foreheads together, his hands still holding her face, not allowing her to turn away from him.

" _Arya Stark,"_ the Lorathi pled, and to her ear, it sounded almost as if he were praying, " _do not hide from me."_

His apprentice sighed and squeezed her eyes shut, nodding as much as she was able to with her face trapped by her master's hands. She felt him smile against her and she returned his smile, her eyes still closed. She then felt Jaqen's lips on her cheek, warm and tender. She slowly brushed her nose back and forth across his chin, reveling in the feel of his skin on hers, not fully understanding how this had all come to pass (how it _was_ like that between them) but eager to show him that she could learn; to show him that she could be soft, even when she did not want to be.

"You _do_ feel what I feel," she asserted in a faint whisper, acknowledgment of the truth for which her little voice had tried so often to advocate. "You _do._ You _do._ " The girl was not even aware that she had spoken the words aloud until she heard her master laughing softly.

"A man feels, sweet girl. Too much so."

Her cool hand against his jaw turned his face further downward toward hers and a small lift of her toes brought her mouth to his, where her lips hovered only a breath away from him. She ran the tip of her tongue gently across the small wound of his lip, tasting his blood faintly, and it called to some deeper part of her; the part that was more wolf than girl. The hairs on her arms raised and her pulse quickened as she softly pulled his injured lip between hers, trying to mimic her master's earlier, careful movements. When he responded and returned her kiss, she melted into him with a quiet moan. His arms tightened around her, the flat of his palms curving to the contour of her spine, but the wolf in her gave a small shiver, feeling uneasy. The change in her marked her awareness of something being _wrong._ She was displaying that sense that only animals have that warns them of approaching danger. She pulled away from him abruptly.

_Disobedience has consequences._

"Jaqen," the girl breathed, looking around them nervously, "we can't do this. We have to stop."

He groaned and drew her closer into him.

"A girl may ask of a man _anything,_ but not _that_."

And then he was kissing her again, his lips nearly _still,_ only barely moving against hers, afraid that if he allowed himself to act with all the feverish intensity that resonated through him just then, he would hasten the end of _this;_ this _thing_ he had longed for during endless nights in his chamber and countless days of duty and training and worship and service. As the tip of his tongue lightly traced the margin where Arya's lips were parting to release a slow breath, Jaqen was vaguely aware of his lovely girl's fear, cutting through his own desire, but what worried her was not something he was able to consider at that moment. It did not seem _real_ to him. It could not be as real as her touch, her soft breathing, or the steady pulse of her blood beneath the hand he had moved to her neck just then. He did not fear his master when he felt her body pressed against his. He did not fear the wrath of the order. As he tasted her and savored her and caressed her with a touch so light that it reminded the girl of the feel of the finest silk barely grazing her skin, he only feared losing her. He only feared her slipping out of his arms and then disappearing into the night. He only feared the absence of all that he held onto at that moment.

There was no one in the garden to betray them, he insisted to himself, burying one of his hands in her hair, letting his fingers move through the soft waves as he breathed her in and out, in and out. They were alone, with only the moon and the trees and the high garden walls to witness their sin; the sin of defiance; the sin of wanting; the sin of _becoming._

* * *

 _ **In Your Eyes-**_ Peter Gabriel

* * *

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A word about the song choice... 
> 
> I recognize that "In Your Eyes" will forever belong to Lloyd Dobler and Diane Court, but it's *such* a great song and there's probably a whole generation that doesn't even *get* that reference, so maybe this song should get a second life as the theme song of Jaqen kissing Arya in the courtyard garden of the House of Black and White. It's just so *perfect*...
> 
> And, as always, please don't sue me, George, you own all the stuff.
> 
> OH, and last but not least, a giant thank you to all those who are taking time to read, who have waited patiently for 49 chapters to get one real kiss, and for everyone who has left a review. As always, I greatly appreciate your time and attention.


	50. Chapter 50

The fact that the Cat's mind was capable of having many thoughts at once during times of great stress had already been proven, both when her master had admonished her for her disregard of his tacit instruction to _mind her own damn business_ (in that case, admonishment had occurred at the point of his dagger while she was pinned against her own door in the dark) _and_ during her adventure with the lords of the canal. In the former instance, she had been capable of feeling terrified of the very real danger presented by the menacing Lorathi, making calculated decisions meant to remove herself from the threatening situation _alive_ , and both admiring and learning from Jaqen's masterful execution of just being _himself,_  the most skilled assassin in the most elite of all the assassins guilds. In the latter instance, she had been able to receive information from her senses about her surroundings (her cold, wet, mucky, airless, _eel-infested_ surroundings), begin a countdown in her head that would inform her as to how long the breath in her lungs would sustain her, and lament what she had thought was her master's involvement in placing her in such a precarious and disagreeable position, all while working out how she would survive despite the odds seemingly not being in her favor.

Here, yet again, was an instance of the girl's mind fracturing to allow different parts of herself to ponder each of the various considerations of her circumstances; to feel all of her battling wants and warnings, weighing them against one another. That this most recent layering of her thoughts had been inspired by something as sublime and remarkable (and _astonishing_ ) as _being kissed by Jaqen H'ghar_ was proof that the _great stress_ that inspired her separation into multiple parts performing simultaneous tasks did not have to be a completely _unpleasant_ thing, despite her past experiences.

Unfortunately, it was _also_ proof that even something as glorious as _this_ , this unforeseen fulfillment of her most closely held desire, could never be a simple or an easy thing; at least not for a girl training to be a Faceless Man. As much as she wished it were not so at that moment, she knew that within the walls of the House of Black and White, every happiness was tainted with apprehension and every action was subject to judgment.

And punishment.

 _We're not within the walls of the temple, though. Not really,_ the apprentice told herself weakly, knowing that it was stupidity to quibble with _herself_ but torn between caring about that fact and ignoring it completely. She thought, _We are outside of the temple,_ repeating the words over and over in her head like a desperate prayer; like a child clinging to some idea of a verbal talisman; as if saying _there are no monsters under my bed_ three times quickly while clenching her eyes shut would _make it so_ and protect her through the night while she slept. She played this frantic game with herself, all while holding fast to her wish that _this_ would never end, and knowing that it _had_ to.

For both of their sakes.

Jaqen's arms were tight around her, the heat of his palms branding the skin over her spine, insistently pushing against the small of her back. His mouth was moving over hers, slowly and with a restraint that was somehow detectable to her through his measured breathing against her cheek and the side of her nose; through the steady pressure of his hands, searing her bare flesh. His hair, unbound, fell forward as his head inclined toward hers, and the soft, scented strands tickled the skin of her cheek and beneath her jaw. She smelled spices. _Cloves and ginger. Soap. Leather._ Her senses were nearly overwhelmed. She received their input in overlapping waves and she barely had time to comprehend it all.

_Touch and smell and taste._

_Apprehension. Desire. Doubt and yearning and ecstasy._

_Warmth._

_Tickling. Twisting. Tingling._

_Breathless._

_Weightless._

_Careless._

_Dangerous (no!)_

_Yes!_

And her mind split itself off into pieces.

Part of her perceived each of these sensations and tried desperately to make sense of them, attempting to understand the effect Jaqen's touch and kiss were having on her (through a filter made of disbelief and elation and _craving_ ) and to respond in kind; _here_ raising onto her toes again so that she might find the leverage she would need to press her mouth more firmly to his; _there_ using her fingers to lightly trace the fading scars at his neck, from just beneath the angle of his jaw to the sensitive spot where his neck met his collarbone; wounds now more pink than the angry red she recalled. Part of her remained cool, logical, and very appropriately alarmed; alarmed about what the Kindly Man might say (and _do_ ) when he discovered what was happening in his courtyard, by his fountain, between his assassins; alarmed about how this _choice_ would affect her relationship with her master, a man she admired and desired but above all else, a man she _needed_ and therefore, could not afford to lose. Part of her simply _exulted_ , driven by something deeper and more instinctive than conscious thought, and that part could not measure or quantify; that part could not interpret or consider; that part merely _felt_ and _wanted_ and _sought_ ; that part heedlessly _tempted_ and _pleaded_ and _beckoned_ with quiet sighs and subtle movements and gentle shivers, beguiling reactions all; that part lured a man along the path to his own destruction and deprived him of his reason and his sense of self-preservation.

That part invited him to burn as she burned.

_Surrender._

The assassin moved one hand up his lovely girl's back, dragging it slowly in a way that made her insides _thrum_ in continuous, small vibrations, like the strings of a harp or a mandolin being played by a gifted minstrel. She felt him move the hand over her shoulder and then his fingers were lightly grazing something there. Gradually, he pulled his head back from hers, his lips tensing for a second longer before they left her mouth and she fluttered her lids open, expecting to find his bronze gaze probing her eyes. But he was not looking at her face; his attention was on her right shoulder as his fingertips lightly danced there.

"A man remembers this scar," Jaqen murmured, tracing the imperfection gently. "He has seen it before... _Felt it before."_

The girl gave him a bewildered look, unsure of when he had ever noted that small scar and confused by the suddenly _suggestive_ tone of his voice.

He quirked up one corner of his mouth, a dimple appearing on his cheek as he purred, " _In the bath_."

The memory flooded her mind and she vacillated between wry amusement and acute embarrassment. She recalled that she had been impatiently waiting for him to finish telling her about his trip to Westeros when he had interrupted his tale to query her about the scar. If memory served, she had told him the wound resulted from a fight she had with someone who refused to finish telling her a tale, making her impatience for her master to _get on with it_ very clear. The girl started to chuckle at the memory but her laughter turned immediately to a small gasp as she _then_ recalled that shortly after that, the blanket of bubbles that had shielded her from her master's gaze had fled and he had seen her reclining in the chilled bath water, clothed only in goose-flesh.

"A girl never did tell a man honestly how she came by it," the Lorathi assassin continued in a low voice, "and a man was shortly too distracted by... _other things_ to remember to ask again."

The girl's cheeks flushed and though Jaqen could not make out the blush in the dark of the nighttime garden, he knew that it was there.

"A man does not complain," he purred in a soothing voice, giving her his mocking reassurance. "He rather _enjoyed the distraction_."

_How could he tease her at a time like this? And how could his teasing make her feel so… so…_

The girl's fingers slid from her master's fine, dark doublet, a remnant of _Marco_ , curling inward as they did. Her hands formed tight fists that she used to push deeply into her own gut to still its twisting; to stop that _falling_ sensation; to regain some of her breath and her wits.

Jaqen cocked his head to the side, both hands now holding her shoulders. His one thumb absently stroked her scar as he watched the movements of her fists, saying, "Does your belly trouble you, sweet girl? Did you mistakenly ingest some of your own concoction at the wealthy man's home?"

Arya simply shook her head, her eyes steadfastly staring at one of the clasps of his doublet as she tried to banish the trembling feeling in her chest and the airy feeling in her head. She pulled at the various threads of her thoughts in an effort to formulate a coherent argument either _for_ or _against_ this blatant defiance of the Kindly Man's wish that she remain apart from her master for the time being. She found that every time she managed to think of four or five intelligent words with which to state one point or another, the image of Jaqen towering over her while she lay shivering in her bath arose and blasted her thoughts apart, rendering her speechless.

 _Damn his interminable teasing!_ she huffed inwardly.

"No?" he asked, starting to sound concerned. "Why so silent, then?"

The apprentice drew in a slow, steadying breath and mustered her resolve. It took all she possessed to pull herself from her master's hands and walk away from him, moving from the fountain to the familiar, dark stone bench beneath the lemon tree. She was surprised by how shaky her legs felt as she walked.

 _It has been a long night,_ she thought, telling herself that it was exhaustion brought on by the events at Lord Atius' manse and the climb over his garden wall and then all the rowing and the long walk home that caused her sudden weakness. _It could not be the kissing. That would be absurd._ The girl reached the bench just in time and dropped gratefully to it, bracing herself by placing her palms flat against the smooth surface of the seat.

Jaqen had turned to watch her retreat from him, his expression unreadable. When his apprentice finally looked up at him, he left his spot near the fountain and approached her cautiously, stopping two feet in front of her and crossing his arms over this chest in an expectant gesture.

"Jaqen," the girl began hoarsely, and then stopped to clear her throat, hoping to make her voice stronger and more sure, "you _know_ what he told me."

There was no doubt as to which _he_ the apprentice was referring.

"A man knows," the assassin acknowledged. "He spoke with a man about this as well."

She had not known that. Knowing it _now_ made her feel a bit sick. The Kindly Man had expressed his wishes to _both_ of them.

 _This will not be good,_ she realized, closing her eyes and burying her face in her hands. An only partially defined fear of _loss_ began to bubble up from within her and she shook her head, trying to deny the troublesome thought purchase in her mind before the worry could fully form. The Lorathi could sense the distress radiating from his apprentice and so kneeled before her, pressing his chest against her knees and grasping her hips with his hands, seeking to comfort her. At his touch, the girl dropped her hands into her lap and looked down at his face. When the assassin saw her gaze settle on his eyes, he smiled up at her. It was a small thing, that smile, but when she saw what was behind it… when he _allowed_ her to read what was behind it, her brow wrinkled and she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, chewing on it lightly. Jaqen's smile widened until he was grinning then and he reached for her mouth, dragging his fingers across her lip and tugging it from between her teeth.

"A girl should not worry so. Do you believe a man would allow any harm to befall you?"

"It's not just _me_ that I'm worried about," she shot back, her brow now furrowed in consternation.

Jaqen tilted his head, his eyes earnest as his smile faded and he gazed intently into his apprentice's troubled eyes.

"Please don't look at me like that, Jaqen," she whispered.

"A man's look is what distresses a girl?"

"No, the Kindly Man's impending anger is what distresses a girl. A _man's look…_ " she sighed, her voice trailing off.

"Yes?" the assassin prodded.

She started to chew her lip again, and then, realizing it, gave a slight start and released it from her teeth before her master could touch her mouth again. _It was too hard for her to think when he did that._

"A man's look makes it too difficult for me remember my duty," she said quickly, looking away from him. "It makes me only remember what it feels like to be kissed by him." Her belly was full of snakes again, and there were butterflies in her chest. In a whisper almost too faint to hear, she added, "And it makes it too hard for me to breathe." She held her breath then, waiting to hear what her master would have to say to _that_ , but not daring to look at him.

After a pause, Jaqen chuckled softly and that drew a sharp glare from his apprentice. He gave her look of mock contrition and stifled his laughter, glad to have her gaze upon his face once again.

"How _does_ it feel to be kissed by a man?" he asked her, his eyes still playing at seriousness, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

The girl dropped her head back as she dispelled a great breath of air and gazed at the night sky through the leaves of the lemon tree, crossing her arms over her chest. He was teasing her again, trying to make her forget her worry, she knew, but the question gnawed at her nonetheless.

 _Yes_ , her little voice piled on, _go ahead and describe that feeling. Tell him it makes you feel as if you have an assortment of animals nesting among your innards. He'll like that._

The girl grimaced at her little voice, and her master, seeing the change in her expression, said, "Oh, come now, it surely cannot be as bad as all that."

"Jaqen!" she hissed, exasperated with her little voice, with the Lorathi's teasing, _and_ with the fact that he was forcing _her_ to be the level-headed one (when all she wanted to do was fall into his arms and let him kiss her and kiss her and kiss her). "We cannot do this now! _After_ my trial, then we..."

"Then we have no assurances of _anything,_ " he interrupted. "Lovely girl, a man has said he will shield you from any harm. A man will deal with your _Kindly Man_. What are you so afraid of?" As he spoke, he lifted his hands and placed them on either side of her face, stroking his thumbs along her cheekbones, feeling the soft skin there and seeking to soothe her worries.

"Losing you," she whispered to him then. "I'm afraid of losing you. I've never been able to keep _anyone_ who has ever meant anything to me, _not ever_ , and if we do this, I will lose you, too. I _know_ it."

"Lose me?" the assassin murmured, his voice both gravel and honey. He guided Arya's face down to his own. "But lovely girl, you've only just _found_ me."

 _I know,_ she thought sadly, but then all she knew was the feel of his lips on hers, and she felt her concern and her sadness dissolve and disappear completely, replaced by driving thirst and a feeling of burning. She was seized by the notion that only Jaqen's kiss could quench the fire and so she met it and pressed it and demanded more, her sudden intensity drawing from her master a rumbling sound that reminded her of a wolf growling. The girl found that rather than dousing and cooling her burn, however, the embers of the smoldering wildfire that she carried always within her sparked again to life and the flames licked up from deep inside, spreading from her belly outward, scorching her whole body, inch by inch.

When Jaqen finally pulled his mouth away from hers to lean into her and bury his face against the white flesh of her neck, the girl closed her eyes and tried to stifle her gasp, pulling her bottom lip once again between her teeth. Had her master seen her, he would have wondered which of her worries troubled her then, but in truth, she was not chewing her lip as she usually did, but _tasting it;_ tasting _him_ ; savoring the spice and heat he had left on her as she slipped her trembling fingers into his hair and pulled him closer and closer.

"Oh," Arya breathed, the word drawn out into a soft, sighing lament, "we are doomed. We are _doomed._ "

 _Yes,_ her little voice agreed. _You ought to enjoy your pretty things while you still can._

* * *

Jaqen had been reluctant to let her leave him, but his apprentice had finally convinced him that she needed to change out of her ruined gown and get some sleep. The Lorathi had then hooked one finger barely beneath her neckline and traced the length of the bloody material from one collar bone to the other, saying, "A man will be sorry to see it go."

" _What_?" the girl demanded, incredulous. "You _never_ wanted me to wear this! You _hate_ this gown!"

"A man hated that Biro forced a girl to wear it so he could leer at a girl's flesh."

"It wasn't _my_ flesh he was interested in," Arya reminded her master. "Are you saying that only Biro offended you? Now that he's gone, I can bare my flesh all I like and it doesn't bother you?"

"A man is saying that now that it is _your_ flesh that is being bared, he sees a certain… _charm_ to the garment."

Jaqen had grinned wickedly then, and she made to punch his arm in vexation. He caught her fist before she made contact, however, uncurling her fingers forcefully (though she truly did not put much effort into her resistance), and then kissed each slender digit one by one, causing her heart to hammer at her chest most uncomfortably.

_And the light-headedness he was causing her was bloody inconvenient._

"Honestly, Jaqen," the girl scolded, " _I'm_ supposed to be the impetuous one! You have to let me go!"

"A man is so sorry, lovely girl," the Lorathi started, speaking between finger-kisses and not sounding the _least bit sorry_ to her ear, "he just finds you so _appealing_. Perhaps if you did not wear such tempting clothing, he would be better able to exercise his self-control…"

The Cat snorted and rolled her eyes, pulling her hand from his grasp as she told him how ridiculous that sounded.

"You have the most self-control of any man I know," she pointed out.

When her master reflected on how his lovely girl looked in her gown of blood, and how he had only touched her in the gentlest of ways, he thought that perhaps his apprentice was right; he _did_ have an inordinate amount of self-control. Giving a comical sigh of exasperation, the Lorathi rocked back on his heels and stood, offering Arya his hand and pulling her up from the bench.

"Very well, then," he acquiesced. "Run away to your cell and put on something more appropriate for sleeping. A man recalls a certain gift a girl once received from a ship's captain. That should do."

" _More appropriate_ isn't exactly the way I would describe _that_ garment!" the girl declared.

"Well, given a girl's more recent taste in attire, a man thought a girl would find it fitting enough."

"It's not _my_ taste!" she railed. " _I_ can't wait to get this stupid thing off!" She plucked at her skirts as if to demonstrate just how horrible Mattine's dress really was.

"Just so," Jaqen answered, but added, "though perhaps you should allow a man to help you. He recalls how much trouble the knots at your neckline gave you before."

Arya hesitated for the briefest of moments, and then swept her hair over and shoulder, turning her back to her master.

"Actually," she started, throwing him a look over her shoulder and offering him the knot. With a bat of her lashes, she continued, "Only if you don't mind…"

Her mentor chuckled at her bold counterstrike and swiftly worked the knots with his nimble fingers. When the ribbon securing her gown fell free, she held the red and white bodice in place with her hand and turned, thanking the master assassin with overdone courtesy and an elegant curtsy befitting a lady in waiting. He snorted at her and swatted her bottom, sending her scampering down the path toward the temple. As he watched the girl's skirts flutter around her ankles during her flight, he shook his head and thought, _doomed, indeed._

* * *

The girl had finally made it to her cell, determined to shed the ruined gown Biro had made her wear while she served in his house. Her arrival had been slightly delayed when she encountered the black and white cat that roamed the temple. The tom had meowed at her, slowing her progress as he sauntered from the shadows of the garden and stood between her and the door that would let her inside.

"Oh, have you concluded your nighttime activities, little cat?" the girl asked, bending to scratch him behind his ears. The tom had not been named (appropriate, considering his chosen home), and so she always referred to him in this way. He arched his back and purred loudly to express his appreciation of her attentions. He then rose up and began scratching at the wooden door, marking it with his claws. She took that as an indication that he was ready to go back inside.

"Very well, then. Just don't leave any mice by my door like you did to the Bear last month."

There was something singularly unpleasant about stepping on a half-eaten mouse with one's bare foot, she thought before she and the cat proceeded to enter the temple. They went their separate ways in the main chamber, the mouser leaping onto the pool ledge and the girl continuing down the side corridor, intending to enter the stairwell that would take her down to her floor.

"Don't drink the water, little cat," she called down the passageway to the tom before she pushed through the stairwell door. He just looked at her with his inscrutable feline gaze and proceeded to lick his paw.

Once in her room, her offending gown puddled on her floor and exchanged for her plain sleeping shift (she was gratified to see the laundresses had salvaged it after her turn in the canal muck), the Cat found that she was recovered ( _mostly_ ) from the weak-kneed feeling she had experienced in the garden. She chastised herself for such a display of ridiculous delicacy, _and in front of her master, too, though she was glad he had not mentioned it to her._ Still, she expected to be tired and so laid in her bed but sleep would not come.

Her mind, she discovered, was rather _occupied_.

There was much to think on, and much that intruded into her mind, demanding her attention, but she wasn't ready to sort it out just then. It was too _new_ , too _tangled_ and _overwhelming._ She wanted the thoughts to _cool_ before she made any attempt at deciphering them. Still, the damnable concerns and thrills taunted her, buzzing around in her head like swarming honey bees whose hive had been disturbed. And when she thought of _Jaqen_ , it was as if he were kissing her all over again. The sensations returned to her in a rush.

_Falling, burning, and a sort of breathless, ardent yielding…_

And then the messy nest of warring thoughts descended, heavy in her head.

_Want and worry. Disobedience and desire. Possibility and peril. Certainty and confusion._

_And then, bewilderment._ She was bewildered by the fact that Jaqen had chosen _her_ (again) and that she had just gotten more than she had any right to expect from the one man she never believed she would have any claim to, yet all it had done was make her want more. _More and more and more_. _Selfish._

_Self._

"Can _No One_ love?" she wondered aloud in a hoarse whisper.

She knew how the Kindly Man would answer that question, and it gave her a tight, cold feeling that she did not like. She threw her blanket off and leapt from her bed, rummaging through the clothes in her trunk until she found a pair of fitted breeches and a loose tunic. She donned them, slipped her small throwing blade into a sheaf at her wrist, and left her cell, determined to do _something_ that was not worrying about Jaqen or the principal elder or her own muddled thoughts.

She settled on trekking to the inn, determined to let Olive know about her plans for Syrio. _Well, perhaps not her_ exact _plans._ But the wench deserved to know that the little pot boy was safe and hadn't just disappeared in the aftermath of Biro's death. She also thought she might probe the girl about _why_ she had come to believe that Lord Atius was her father. As she slipped again into the deserted garden and overtopped the wall, she wondered what Olive would think of the _Pentoshi widow_ showing up in her chamber well past midnight, dressed like a boy, informing her that she was taking her half-brother away for _religious training._ Ah, well. She supposed she could polish her story and give it a more convincing sheen on her walk over.

The Cat moved like a shadow through the streets of Braavos and felt a certain, inexplicable tension as she approached the inn. She decided to try the alleyway door which led to the kitchen, hoping the cook had carelessly left it unbarred so that she might slip in easily and unnoticed. As the girl turned down the appropriate alley, she saw a figure at the other end, exiting the narrow lane on the bay side. He was nothing more than a graceful shadow to her eye and then he was quickly gone from her sight, but she suddenly experienced that uncomfortable prickling sensation of her neck and arms that told her something was _not quite right._

She tried the door and found it opened easily. Now, though, instead of feeling relieved, the discovery only intensified her apprehension. The Cat slipped into the familiar kitchen of the inn and peeked into her old cell. It was empty—the new cook must have gone home to her husband for the night. That meant there were very few guests in the inn and the older woman did not expect to need to rise early in order to attend to her duties. _Quick as a snake,_ the apprentice entered the chamber and dropped to her knees, feeling the underside of the mattress for a tell-tale slit in the ticking. When she found it, she reached in and retrieved the two small blades she had left there before she departed the inn for the wealthy man's home. One, she tucked into her boot. The other she slipped inside of a long, narrow pocket in her breeches; one designed for just such a purpose.

As the young assassin moved into the common room, it struck her that the inn was preternaturally quiet.

 _It is late,_ she reasoned.

 _It's not right,_ her little voice warned her.

She had to admit, there was a pervasive sense of dread about the place, and she could not decide if it was more foolish to pay it too much heed or to ignore it. She wavered between dismissing her foreboding as a result of a mind overwrought and embracing it as the _instinct_ her master had assured her she possessed in abundance. She then thought of the retreating figure in the alleyway and slipped the dagger from her pocket back into her palm before making her way slowly up the stairs.

When she reached Olive's door, the Cat paused and just listened. The silence seemed to pulse in her ears and her temples began to throb. Blade raised to chest level, the girl pushed into the serving wench's chamber and could just make out Olive's plump form stretched out on her bed in the moonlight which streamed through the open window. Straining for sounds of the wench's breathing proved useless as the pulsing in the girl's ears had grown audible and tamped down the ambient noise. Frustrated, the Cat approached the bed and muttered, "Nar 'amala," setting the fat candle on the wench's table ablaze.

Olive lay on her little bed, her curls arranged so that they framed her pretty face. The wench was unnaturally still, her eyes open and glittering like glass, staring at nothing. Her lips were slightly parted, forming a small _O_ , as if preparing to draw in a great breath. The Cat did not have to touch her to know that she was dead, but she approached the serving girl's corpse and laid her hand upon Olive's smooth, untroubled brow anyway.

 _Oh, Olive_ , the acolyte thought sadly. _I warned you._

For there was no doubt in the Cat's mind that the order was responsible for this.

 _The Bear_ , Arya then thought with a sharp pang, closing her eyes and dropping her face into her hands. She felt the cold steel of her blade against her cheek as her sorrow for her brother filled her. _This will ruin him. I have to find him and tell him before he stumbles in here and finds her._

She left her friend's room, drawing the door shut behind her. She made her way through the inn, compelled to make an inspection, looking for evidence of the order's involvement despite knowing that there would be none. And knowing that the absence of such evidence _was_ the evidence.

She found Will next, crumpled on the floor of an otherwise unoccupied guest room down the corridor from Olive's cell. His throat had been cut and his blood was already thick and sticky on the floorboards beneath is head. The girl's legs felt leaden and her expression was sad as she finally entered Staaviros' office. The innkeeper was hanging from a rafter, his face purple, his eyes and tongue bulging. A bloody knife rested on his desk, in plain sight. She understood very well what such a scene was meant to convey. It had been arranged perfectly.

The Cat tiredly dropped into a chair across from the hanging man, staring up at him forlornly. _He had been kind to her. He had always treated her gently and he had offered her protection from the wealthy man._

 _Olive_ , she understood in a way, even if it pained her greatly. But Will and Staaviros? They were merely props. Looking at the innkeeper's discolored face, it was hard to accept that death was a _gift_ just then. And she did not think her _brother_ would think it such a wonderful gift, either, once she told him what she had found here. She did not relish bringing the news of Olive's death to the Lyseni, but she felt obligated to do it, anyway.

 _Was there really no other way?_ she thought angrily. _Was the wench really such a threat?_

The girl rose wearily, knowing that lingering was pointless. She could not complete the task that had brought her to the inn and everyone here was beyond her help. She left Staaviros where she had found him and slipped through the inn, finding the alley door once again and walking through it without looking back. She had Syrio. There was nothing left for her at the inn anymore.

* * *

The Cat was _certain_ that she hadn't been asleep long enough to justify anyone waking her up just yet. _Maybe I'm dreaming,_ she thought hopefully as the hand once again shook her shoulder a bit. Even though her cell was as dark as pitch, she could not bear to open her eyes, her lids heavy weights that she did not have the will to manage just then. She groaned and turned away from the offending hand, rolling onto one side. The hand then slipped around her neck, wrapping around her throat, not threatening, just touching. She could feel a face move to the crook of her neck and warm lips kiss her there. Then, there was the scent of _cloves_ , rather stronger than she was used to.

_A dream, then._

As lips brushed lightly at her nape, she rolled back toward the warm sensation, sighing. The hand trailed down to her shoulder and she was being kissed behind her ear then. She shivered and said, "Jaqen."

Abruptly, the kiss ended.

"You disappoint me, little wolf," said a voice that did not belong to her master.

_The handsome man._

The girl instinctively recoiled with a startled gasp, fully awake now, and then sat up quickly. In the dark, she could not see where he was and so bumped her head rather hard against his. Barking a curse as her hand flew protectively to her wounded forehead, she hissed the phrase that caused her candle to flare to life. She saw the offending master rising from where he had been sitting on her bed, rubbing at his temple.

"A most inelegant retreat, my girl," the handsome man reproved.

"I already told you that I'm _not_ your girl," she spat. "What are you _doing_ here? And why do you _smell_ that way?"

"Do you like it?" he asked, his voice infuriatingly casual. "I thought I would try something new."

He was wearing his familiar _handsome_ face once again, and dressed in the finer clothes he preferred. He would have been at home among Biro's guests now rather than his guards.

The Cat pulled her blanket more securely over her chest when she saw the way the master was looking at her.

"Why are you here?" she demanded. "What do you want?"

"I want you to get dressed. We have work to do."

" _What_?"

The master gave her a disdainful look and spoke to her as if she were a young child. A particularly _dim_ young child.

"You are an acolyte and therefore require training. As the master you _obviously_ prefer is not able to perform this task at present, it falls to _me_ to complete your education. Now, get up and get dressed. You have five minutes. If you are not in the corridor in that time, I will come back in here and dress you myself."

The girl looked at the handsome man sourly, throwing her covers off and muttering about _what sort of education includes kissing a girl's neck when she's only barely awake_ as she picked up her only recently discarded breeches and tunic from the floor next to her bed. The master smirked as he walked through the door to give her privacy.

"The _best_ kind of education," he answered her, closing the door and drowning out her angry cry.

* * *

Five minutes had passed, and then six. Seeing no sign of the little wolf exiting her room, the handsome man pursed his lips, irritated at what he perceived was the girl's _testing_ of him. He reentered her room to find her fully dressed and sitting on her bed, facing the door.

"Did I _not_ just say that you were to be in the corridor in five minutes?" the master growled.

The girl looked up at him, the grey of her true eyes clouded with worry. The look drew him up short.

"I have to do something first," she said in a quiet voice.

It was on his tongue to challenge her, to admonish her for thinking her desires took precedence over his commands, but _sadness_ seemed to have encased her and he could not understand _why_. His need to discover the truth superseded his irritation.

"What troubles you, little wolf?" the handsome man asked, take a seat next to her on her bed.

She sighed.

"I need to find my brother. There is something he needs to know."

" _Which_ brother?"

"The Bear."

"Ah. Well, you won't find him. He's been sequestered until he can complete his final trial."

" _What?_ " the girl cried. "I just saw him last night! When did _this_ happen?"

"Some time after you saw him, I'd wager," the master replied dryly.

"But... how did you... when..."

" _Why_ do you need to see him?" the master interrupted, and then, almost uncomfortably, asked, "And why do you look like... _that_?" He waved his hand vaguely at her face.

"Like _what_?"

The handsome man placed a hand under the girl's chin and turned her face to his. He used his other hand to stroke the crease between her eyebrows and the downward tilt of her mouth, saying, "Like _that_."

"I... Oh, never mind. I just need to talk to my brother."

"Well, that is impossible, so you will talk to me."

The master's voice was somehow both imperious and sympathetic. It was almost as if he _cared_ about what she was feeling, but would allow no defiance in the matter.

"I wanted to tell him that... _someone_ is dead."

"Oh, _that_ ," the handsome man said dismissively. "Be at ease, little wolf. He knows."

" _What_? What does that mean? How could he _know_? It just happened!"

The handsome man sighed heavily, irritated once again.

"It means that he already knows his little paramour is dead," the master said in High Valyrian. "Is it easier for you to understand in this tongue?"

"But... but..." she sputtered, ignoring his tone.

"He _knows_ because the thing was done _by his hand_ ," the assassin continued. "He knew before you knew. He knew before _anyone_ knew. Now, can we continue on as planned? There is much to do today."

The girl looked at the handsome man, aghast, whispering, "He _wouldn't._ He… he _couldn't._ He _loved_ her!"

"Let that be a lesson to you, little wolf. There are two sides to love, and one of them is very dark."

She gasped at his cavalier tone. The Bear had not killed Olive out of any _darkness_ , she was sure! She could not deny that he had the potential; he was a nearly-Faceless Man, after all, but she had seen him at Biro's feast, dressed in his finery. He was _happy_. _Her_ Bear could not have done this, no matter what this smirking assassin was saying.

The handsome man saw the doubts playing out across her features and he admonished her to rule her face.

"Besides, what I have said is the truth, so you can stop glaring at me and calling me a liar with your eyes. I do not dispute that the Lyseni loved the girl, though I cannot fathom _why_ , but this _was_ his work. It may comfort you to know that what he did, he did for love as much as for _obedience_."

" _For love?_ " she repeated, her tone indicating just how dubious she found the assassin's claim. "You're saying that my brother killed Olive for _love_ of her?"

"Just so," the master replied. "For love of her. _And_ you."

* * *

The handsome man had refused to explain his cryptic reply to her ( _for love of her. And you_ ), saying simply that it was not his tale to tell and that when she was reunited with her brother, she could ask him herself. He then ushered her out of her cell, clucking his tongue at her as he watched her rub at her eyes sleepily.

"Tonight, you are to retire immediately after the supper hour. No more of these _unsanctioned_ late night activities," the master chastised her.

She wanted to argue with him, telling him that she was a _woman grown_ and did not need to be scolded like a toddler or assigned a bedtime, but the way he had referred to _late night activities_ had caused her heart to clench. She did not know if he meant her impromptu trip to the inn or her activities in the courtyard garden (which were decidedly more _pleasant_ than her grim discovery of the corpses of her friends, but were no less _harrowing_ ), so she remained silent as he led her to the small hall.

"Eat quickly," he instructed, "and then meet me in the training room."

She nodded, still not speaking, and then left his side to take her place at table. Little Loric was seated across from her and his eyes lit up when he saw her face. _So he had regained his eyes._

"Welcome home, Cat!" the boy cried happily.

"Thank you, Loric," she answered, her voice still quiet and ragged with sleep. And other things. "Have you seen the Bear?"

"No, not yet," the boy replied, practically bouncing in his seat. "I heard he came back last night, and that he _earned his face_." He shared the news enthusiastically, leaning across the table and relaying it in a loud, conspiratorial whisper. "But I haven't seen him. I _did_ see the new boy, though."

"The new boy?"

"Yeah, that boy Syrio. He just left a little while ago with the principal elder."

" _Syrio was here_?"

Loric sat back in his seat, looking befuddled by his sister's sudden vehemence.

"Yes, he sat right next to me and ate some honey cakes. He said he was brought here by a girl named Mattine. I told him that I didn't know any girl named Mattine, but he seemed pretty sure."

The Cat felt cold fingers of fear creeping up her flanks, under her arms, and across her neck. Olive's glittering eyes, Will's slashed neck, and Staaviros' purpled face crowded her mind and wildly, she thought, _Syrio wasn't there. Was he supposed to be? Did the order wish him dead, too?_ She fought for calm, not wanting to alarm Loric or raise any suspicion. In a sweet voice, she asked, "And he left with the Kindly Man? Just a little while ago?"

"Yes. Well, maybe half an hour now. They left together. Do you think the principal elder will let him train? He seemed like a nice boy."

"A very nice boy," she agreed. _A boy she would not allow to come to harm._ She picked up a hot, crusty roll from the table, stuffing it in her mouth. Giving Loric a small wave, she bounded from the room, intending to find Syrio. And her _Kindly Man._

* * *

In the end, her search proved a short one. As she left the small hall and flew into the main temple chamber, she collided with the principal elder at full force. She bounced off of him and landed in a sprawl on her backside, looking up at his robed figure with a shocked expression as he stood straight and tall, nary a hair out of place.

"Valar morghulis, little Cat. Where are you off to in such a hurry?"

"I…" she started, then remembered her courtesies. "Valar dohaeris, master. I was looking for you."

"Ah, success then," he said to her with a smile, offering her his hand. His grip had a strength belied by his elderly appearance. She knew that in _this_ place, looks were nothing if not deceiving, but it always surprised her when the Kindly Man reminded her that he was not, in fact, a frail, grandfatherly man. When she had run into him just then, it had felt like she was hitting a stone wall.

The Cat swatted at her legs and bottom, knocking off the nonexistent dust and straightening her tunic before she met the elder's piercing gaze. His eyes were startlingly blue, even in the dim of the main temple chamber. He raised his eyebrows at her, waiting for her to speak.

"I need to speak to you. A matter of great importance."

"Then we are of like mind," the elder returned mildly, "for I need to speak to you as well. _A matter of great importance_."

Her heart began to gallop, but her face betrayed nothing as she bowed her head slightly and said, "I am at your disposal."

"Indeed."

He looked at her for a long moment and then indicated that she should walk with him. The girl fell into stride with the principal elder and they walked to the back of the temple and through the garden door, stepping into the dappled sunlight of the dark path that meandered through the courtyard. _Just like Jaqen_ , she thought, recalling the times she had spied the two masters together in just this way.

_Spied. Poor choice of words. Or, perhaps not._

_Will Jaqen be hiding in a tree, listening in?_ her little voice queried. The girl would not dignify _that_ with a response, even in her own head.

"What did you wish to discuss?" the Kindly Man asked the acolyte as they strolled together.

"Syrio," she stated simply, looking up to gauge his expression at her answer. A small smile appeared on the elder's face.

"Ah, yes. Your little pot boy."

"I was told that he was with you this morning."

"Just so."

"I thought… that is, I _believe_ he is a perfect candidate to train. Among the order."

"Do you?"

His reticence was beginning to frustrate her.

"I see in him such potential," she stated, trying to keep the _pleading_ tone out of her voice; trying to be just as matter-of-fact as the elder was.

"Hmm."

"I… Is he… _What has happened to him_?" she finally burst out.

" _Happened_ to him?" was the elder's bemused reply. "Why, nothing, I should think. Not _yet_."

 _Not yet_. The words chilled her to her core.

"What do you mean?" the Cat asked, and her voice sounded weak to her ears.

"I mean that the boy has likely not even arrived at his destination. Or, if he has, Brusco has probably not had time to figure out his duties."

" _Brusco?_ "

_What was he talking about?_

"An inauspicious beginning, to be sure," the principal elder conceded, "but I know of several rather talented assassins who began their training in just this way."

He looked at her meaningfully, and the girl could not contain her shock.

"You are not the only one who sees potential in the boy," he told her, giving her the look that had originally led to her christen him _the Kindly Man_ in the first place. "My brother told me of your _fondness_ for the boy, and how he aided you with your recent mission. I thought perhaps the boy showed an inkling of promise. I have sent him to Brusco."

Relief washed over her and the tension that had stiffened her limbs left all at once, nearly causing her to fall as she felt like her bones had turned to ribbons. _Syrio was to be trained. He was safe._

"I am… most grateful," the girl said to him.

"Not at all," the Kindly Man replied. "Gifted candidates are a rare thing. I can think of only a few _truly_ gifted acolytes to enter these doors." Here, he placed his hand on her shoulder, stopping her progress. A lump rose in her throat as she realized that she was standing in the same spot where Jaqen had found her last night, on the far side of the fountain. "When the Many-Faced god sees fit to guide such talent through our doors, _we must not let it go_."

She swallowed hard, trying to understand if he meant his words only in reference to Syrio, but knowing that was unlikely. With the Kindly Man, there was _always_ a deeper layer of meaning.

"What was it that you intended to discuss with me?" she asked when she felt safe in speaking again, nearly certain her voice would not crack.

"Hmm," the elder mused, furrowing his brow in a practiced way. "It seems to have completely slipped my mind."

The Kindly Man smiled slightly at her, telling her he had other matters to attend to just then. She nodded her understanding.

"Valar Morghulis," he murmured, marking an end to their conversation.

"Valar dohaeris," she returned, her voice full of the reverence he was due. The girl dropped down to sit on the lip of the fountain pool and trailed her fingers over the surface of the cool water as he turned to leave her. The principal elder had only taken a few steps when he called back to her over his shoulder.

"Don't drink the water, little Cat."

* * *

The girl uncharacteristically lost track of time as she sat by the fountain. Her memories of the night before, of Jaqen's touch and kiss and words here in this place, battled with her thoughts about all that she had learned this morning, both from the handsome man and the principal elder. That Syrio was safe, and would be trained, filled her with a satisfaction that was hard to quantify, yet her joy at the knowledge was tempered by her discovery of her brother's involvement in Olive's fate. _And the fate of Will and Staaviros, too,_ she mentally tacked on. It wasn't until her stomach began to grumble at her and she looked up, noting the position of the sun, high in the sky, that she realized it was time for the midday meal. She had passed her entire morning lost to her own thoughts.

The girl rose from her seat and reentered the temple, bound once again for the small hall. When she entered, she felt as if she were the premier attraction at a mummer's show. All eyes focused on her. There was Loric, who always looked at her with an adoring expression, and there was the waif, who regarded her with amusement. The Kindly Man blandly noted her entry but betrayed no particular emotion about it. Jaqen was there, too, and his look was… _enigmatic._

And then there was the handsome man.

He did not bother to hide his fury from anyone, and if she hadn't been certain it would send him flying over the table at her, she would have told him to _rule his face._

When the Cat saw the way the Rat's master was regarding her, she suddenly realized that she was meant to be training with him all morning. The girl had gotten so bogged down with her own cares ( _and her thoughts of her master, or, more precisely, her thoughts of his hands on her shoulders and his lips on her fingers_ ) that she had _completely_ forgotten their appointment. She sucked in a breath and had the good sense to cast the master an apologetic glance before she sat down. A few more of her younger brothers and another two masters filtered into the room after her and slowly, the atmosphere returned to normal.

Even though there was the usual conversation going on around her, and even though Loric peppered her with questions seemingly every minute, there was an undercurrent of tension of which the Cat slowly became aware. It was illustrated by the way the handsome man continued to frown at her and shoot daggers at her with his eyes while Jaqen studiously ignored her. Neither of their behaviors were the norm and so she felt out of sorts. Even though she had entered the room hungry, her appetite waned under the strain. She mostly picked at Umma's crab and cheese pie (she was sure the motherly woman had made it especially when she learned of the Cat's return to the temple and so she swallowed a few bites out of guilt) and tried to keep her eyes on the lower end of the table where her raucous brothers sat. Still, she could feel the scrutiny (and the _lack_ of scrutiny) coming from the upper end.

Soon, the girl gave up completely and pushed her plate away. When the meal had ended and the servants of the Many-Faced god began to filter out of the room and move off to their various duties, the Cat found that she was side by side with Jaqen, near the back of the crowd. He did not look at her or even give any indication that he was aware of her presence, which was appropriate and _wise_ , but caused a sort of stabbing sadness in her center. She glanced off in the opposite direction from him because she feared her eyes might traitorously reveal her mood to anyone who happened to see her. When she did, she felt his fingers lightly graze her palm, stroking it two, then three times, enough to know the contact was not incidental, before he veered off and headed for the front of the temple and out of the ebony and weirwood doors. She stood by the pool in the main temple chamber and watched him go as the room cleared completely but for one little blind boy in his robe of black and white who was lighting candles by the Mother's feet.

The Cat had no assignment yet, but expected to be detained at some point by the Kindly Man to discuss her mission. She thought to go to the training room and make up for her missed lesson of the morning while she waited for the inevitable summons. It was in the stairwell that the handsome man finally caught her.

"Tell me it is your difficulty with languages that led you to misunderstand my _very explicit command_ to meet me in the training room after your breakfast," he growled, his teeth gritted as he grabbed her and unceremoniously threw her against the wall of the first landing. He had surprised her by coming up from the lower flight as she distractedly looked at her feet, wondering where Jaqen was heading.

"I was walking with the Kindly Man!" the girl explained rather breathlessly. She was ashamed to admit that he had startled the breath out of her. "We had matters to discuss!"

"Yes, I am sure you did. Strangely, he told me this himself when I saw him, not a quarter hour past the time I expected you. _He_ managed to find his way back to the temple from the garden. Did he bind you to a _tree_ or a _bench_ and abandon you there?"

"No," she replied, her tone more insolent than was advisable. The handsome man tightened his grip on her throat.

"Then I fail to see what excuse you can offer me that I would find satisfactory."

"If you knew where I was, why didn't you just come and find me?"

It was the wrong thing to say. His expression was cold when he said, "Little wolf, it is not for me to come _find you_. _I_ am the master here, a fact I plan to remind you of in the training room."

He leaned his face closer to hers and soon the side of his mouth was touching her ear. He breathed hotly for a moment and then whispered, "This makes twice you have left me waiting for you. There will not be a third time."

The handsome man pulled the Cat roughly from the wall by the neck of her tunic, nearly lifting her off of her feet as he did. He spun her around and for a delirious moment, she thought he meant to toss her down the stairwell. Instead, he waited for her to regain her balance and then released her, bidding her to lead the way.

_It seemed that there was more than one terrifying assassin with in the House of Black and White._

* * *

True to his word, the handsome man had demonstrated his fighting prowess and applied all of his considerable skill without mercy, making it clear just _who_ was the master and who was the apprentice. The Cat tried to ignore the fact that most of what he was doing to her (and what he was doing was knocking her to the ground, frequently and often _gleefully_ ) was meant as retribution for her earlier transgression and attempted to glean whatever lessons she could from it.

They were sparring both with training blades _and_ their bodies in a glorious combination of hand-to-hand combat and swordplay. At distance, their blades clashed sharply but when they drew near one another, the Cat quickly learned that meant the assassin planned to assault her with a sharp elbow or a fist or trip her with a sweeping kick. She also quickly learned _not_ to expect a hand up when she found herself on the ground. Rather, she had best roll quickly away or spring up, lest she find the master's blade or the heel of his boot grinding into her breastbone or her belly.

It was frustrating and painful and she spent most of her time avoiding his blows rather than attacking him (truly, he was in a frenzy), but slowly, she began to adjust to the style and when she managed to finally fell him, she was filled with the sort of triumphant elation that she could only find in combat.

_Blood and steel._

The master was quick to rise (she was too distracted by her own surprise at having knocked him down to incapacitate him afterwards) and when he did, he attacked her with a new vigor. This time, however, she met his challenges rather than concentrating merely on avoidance, finding the exercise a satisfying outlet for all the vast emotional turmoil she had experienced just within the past day. While she spent a fair amount of time scampering away from him and even more time striking the hard stone of the floor with her back, her arm, her knees, and her arse, those moments grew further and further apart. Instead of tiring, she felt as if she were growing stronger and she began to read his moves and understand what it was he intended, almost before he had even begun his attacks. This new expertise seemed to be accompanied by the most minor feeling of dizziness, but she managed to continue fighting on without falling.

At last, she had him. They were three feet apart and she knew he meant to bring his longsword crashing down on her from above. Just as his blade raised high in the air, the girl spun toward him like a dancer. His sword crashed down and struck the empty spot where she had just been standing and the unexpected _absence_ of the girl threw him slightly off balance. At that precise moment, the girl pivoted to his side and threw her leg around him, catching the master behind his already buckling knees, forcing them to bend and sending him crashing down into a kneeling position. She pushed herself against his back and threw her forearm across his windpipe, pulling back savagely as she panted, "Yield!" into his ear.

There was no hesitation as the master reached behind him, and _quick as a snake,_ wrapped his hands around her throat, squeezing as he rasped, "We are at an impasse, little wolf. But I'd wager I can squeeze the life out of you before you could do the same to me."

As if to prove his point, he clamped his iron grip even tighter around her neck and the pain shot up her throat to the space behind her eyes.

"I yield," she croaked, releasing the master's neck. Before she could understand what was happening, the assassin had spun around on his knees and knocked her backwards. Once more, she found herself laid out flat, only this time, instead of him jabbing her with his sword or his heel, he merely pinned her to the ground with his body. _Not that she had been inclined to go anywhere with the wind knocked out of her, anyway_.

"Do you think you will be sparring on training grounds with Westerosi knights, little wolf?" the handsome man asked her as he smirked down at her pained expression. "What is this _yield_ you keep blathering about? Assassins are not bound by a sense of _fairness_."

"How else are we to know when the fight is over?" the girl asked.

"When one of us can no longer fight, the fight is over," he answered as if he could not fathom a stupider question being asked of him.

"I _can't_ fight anymore," she whined.

The assassin gazed down at the girl, her hair thrown messily into her face and all over the floor around her and apparently took pity on her, releasing her pinned wrist so that he could gently brush the hair from her eyes. She smiled wanly at him, the picture of gratitude, and then used her newly freed hand to form a fist which sailed into his jaw with an audible crack. The master grunted in pain and pulled back from her enough that she was able to use her knee to force him off of her. She used his reeling momentum to knock him onto _his_ back and then she pounced onto his chest, securing his arms with her knees as she sat astride his belly. The girl sat up tall, keeping him from using his head to butt hers. She smiled prettily down at the master and lifted her brows.

"I always enjoy showing a little mercy myself," she told him, mimicking his accent perfectly and paraphrasing something he had once told her, "but I make a point to finish the job first."

"Well done, little wolf, but surely you must realize that you cheated shamelessly."

"Cheated?" the girl squeaked, affronted. "How so?"

"You read my moves before I made them. I could feel you poking around in my head."

"I never!" the Cat cried. But she _had._ She had done it without even realizing it. "Well, maybe a little, then," she admitted with a thoughtful look, "but surely you wouldn't really expect me to forgo an advantage for the sake of _fairness_. We're assassins, after all, not Westerosi knights."

The master gave her a withering look and the girl winked at him insolently. He pursed his lips but after a few seconds, he smiled and then began to laugh.

"Just so," he relented, his chuckles dying as he gave her a meaningful look and pushed his pinned arms against her knees, barely able to move her.

"What?" she asked. "You don't expect me to let you up, do you? You've already said the fight is over when one of us can't fight anymore. Do you think I trust you enough to release you? We're staying like this until you fall asleep!"

He snorted but before he could reply, their banter was interrupted by the sound of the training room door opening. The both looked up to see Jaqen peering at them, his face expressionless. Arya felt inexplicably guilty to be caught in that posture. For his part, the handsome man was positively _elated_ , judging by his wide grin. And Jaqen… Jaqen was _unreadable._ The Cat leapt to her feet but did not speak. After a brief pause, the Lorathi nodded to them and withdrew.

"I would not recommend poking around in _his_ head just now," the handsome man said to her as he stood, "or you might see firsthand the evidence of the _darker side of love_."

* * *

Over the next few days, the Cat saw very little of her master. Well, very little of her _Lorathi_ master. Of her _handsome_ master, she had seen quite a bit. So much so that they were beginning to bicker and tease like siblings.

The girl thought of some of the looks she had caught the handsome man giving her then.

 _No, not quite like siblings_ , she thought.

When she did see Jaqen, he did not usually openly acknowledge her, respecting her wish to avoid incensing the principal elder by flagrantly disregarding his edict. The Lorathi still hoped to convince the girl that he would not allow her to be harmed. He did not believe there was any real danger, based on the _Kindly Man's_ demonstrated reluctance to truly correct the girl for _anything_ during her years of training _._ There was something at work that Jaqen did not understand, something that protected the girl, and although he was uncertain as to the reason for the special regard his lovely girl received from the order, he knew that with a little care and caution, they could use it to their advantage.

But in order to come to some sort of _terms_ with Arya, her master first needed the opportunity to speak to her, and those opportunities were lacking at present. She was nearly _always_ in the company of either his _handsome_ brother or the principal elder, the latter having taken quite an interest in the details of the girl's successful mission at Atius Biro's manse. The _Kindly Man_ was frequently seen strolling with the girl through the garden or down the long corridor between the main temple chamber and the front doors, discussing various aspects of her plan. He was particularly interested in her use of her own concoction.

"Ingenious," the Lorathi heard his master remark to the girl as he passed them by the temple pool.

 _High praise indeed,_ Jaqen thought. Perhaps his sister was right. The elder did seem to value the girl most of all the acolytes. Perhaps more than many of the masters and priests as well. _But why_?

When the Cat's master did find himself in close proximity to her and the circumstances allowed for it, he found ways to touch her or catch her eye so that he might give her a look that only she was meant to read. Once, they had even passed each other in the empty stairwell, and the Lorathi had quickly swept the girl into his arms, burying his face into her hair, letting her scent wash over him. He had murmured, " _Lovely girl_ " before he pressed a kiss upon her lips. It had been days since he had been able to kiss her, and the need to do so again was almost dizzying. As quickly as it had started, however, it was over, the sound of the stairwell door opening announcing that they were no longer alone. Jaqen's bronze eyes burned with regret but a look at the girl's worried brow convinced him to release her. They had separated swiftly and continued on their separate ways.

As he pictured the girl's soft cheek and remembered the feel of her beneath his palms, he thought he really _must_ find some time to speak with her. Alone. His fingers ached to touch her.

And there was this matter of a _kiss,_ and perhaps _something more;_ some interaction between his brother and his lovely girl with which his _handsome_ brother had recently taunted him; a matter he most fervently wished to discuss with his apprentice.

* * *

 _ **I Was Broken—**_ Marcus Foster (also, check out Rob Pattinson's cover)

 _ **Stubborn Love—**_ The Lumineers

 _ **Take Me Home—**_ Lisbeth Scott and Nathan Barr

 _ **What's This Life**_ _**For—**_ Creed

 _ **So Cruel—**_ U2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all enjoyed Kissy-Face Jaqen with the Kung Fu grip. I worried it was a bit overdone, but really, can there *ever* be too much Jaqen H'ghar kissing? And on that note, I am so very excited to direct you to a creation of Pandorica 11—a lovely drawing of the reunion between Jaqen and Arya in the courtyard garden. I'm always so in awe of people who can draw and paint. Even my stick figures need work, but I digress... When I received the PM saying a drawing of that moment had been created and uploaded to Deviantart, I was completely thrilled. Please take a look at this lovely picture. You can either go to my Fanfiction profile page and click the direct link, or you can type this into your browser: hopeful dormouse . deviant art dotcom / art / The-Assassin-s-Apprentice-Fanart (remove the spaces and change the word "dot" to an actual DOT, as FF is being a party pooper and no matter how I type that out, it won't accept it). Enjoy! And thanks again, Pandorica 11 (a.k.a. hopefuldormouse)!
> 
> Acknowledgments: thanks to JinxedSydney for her input on that first, ridiculously convoluted sentence. Of course, considering that it remained ridiculously convoluted even after her input, she may wish to disassociate herself from it entirely…


	51. Chapter 51

_Your eyes, they tie me down so hard_

* * *

Rarely had the Cat ever been so busy while residing under the roof of the House of Black and White. No longer did she find that she had her own time; the Kindly Man and the handsome man and even the waif seemed to conspire in order to deprive her of a moment to herself (moments where she might have otherwise sought Jaqen out. Surreptitiously, of course). Every moment of her day seemed now occupied with some task or training and when she was finally allowed to stop, the acolyte often found that she was so exhausted that she simply fell into her bed and was lost to the world until the next morning. She had even been too tired on several recent occasions to attend suppers, despite long hours of sparring, sword drills and running through the streets of Braavos on various errands; something for which _both_ of her masters had admonished her, in their own way.

The handsome man had gruffly told her that she could never hope to best him if she did not eat enough to guarantee a reasonable amount of strength. After he had advised her thusly over crossed blades, he swept her from her feet with his leg, a merciless demonstration of his point. The master assassin had merely smirked when the girl looked up at him from her place on the hard floor of the training room in a way that could reasonably be described as _pouting_.

Her Lorathi master's concern seemed to emanate from a _softer_ place.

"A girl is nearly too thin as it is," Jaqen had whispered to her one morning shortly after he found her in the armory pawing through the daggers and shortswords. His arms were wrapped around her lithe body and he imagined that he could easily count her ribs through her thin blouse if he only tried.

"Mmm," was all she said in acknowledgment, for she had his earlobe between her teeth and was not inclined to release it in order to justify her actions or explain the degree of her nightly exhaustion. Had she been more willing to do so, she might have said, "When the choice is between supper and sleep, sometimes sleep is the correct answer." But, since she did not wish to interrupt her enjoyable activities to mount a defense, her master was treated to the gentle vibrations created by her monotone response.

"Really, lovely girl," he groaned, "a man is… ah… most _…_ _serious… hmmm._ "

The Cat pulled away from him slowly, letting her teeth drag incrementally from his earlobe with reluctance, and then gazed up at him through her dark lashes, an impish smile on her lips.

"We've barely been able to speak for _days_ ," the girl finally answered in a decidedly purposeful whimper, employing the same pout she had recently used on her handsome master, "and when we _finally_ have a few moments alone, you want to use them to chastise me about my attendance at meals?"

The Lorathi threw his hands helplessly in the air and noted the girl's smirk at his gesture. _Too much like a man's handsome brother_ , he thought ruefully, welcoming her back into his arms where the girl quickly slipped her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, lightly scratching at his scalp as she pressed her cheek to his chest.

"Still, lovely girl, you should not miss supper tonight, no matter how sleepy you find yourself at the end of your duties."

He could feel her smile against his chest and after a moment, she rose up on her toes and drew her mouth very close to his ear, whispering something to him before he pulled his head back and gave her a look of mock-reproof and shock.

"You are not a lovely girl _at all_ ," Jaqen growled in a low voice, half teasing, half… _something else,_ "but a wicked, wicked child!"

She laughed then, throwing her head back, and his heart soared at the sound of it as she danced away from him and snatched the weapons that she had come for in the first place. Before he could say else to her, she had given him a look full of longing and then she was gone.

The assassin scrubbed at his face with his hands a bit after her departure, hearing her warm whisper in his ear once again, thinking, _she does not understand what she says._ A familiar thought occurred to him, one that had come to him repeatedly since his return to the Free Cities. The Lorathi shook his head and mused to himself that despite all the recent plots and threats against his lovely girl, the person Arya Stark most needed protecting from was _herself._

For when she had pulled his ear to her mouth, she had said, "If you do not see me at the supper table tonight, you will know where to come for me. There is no spelled bolt to deny you entrance."

* * *

In truth, the Cat was not naturally so bold or easy with her master as her manner in the armory had made her seem. But the separation from him, broken only by very brief, occasional encounters (in corridors, passing in the temple, across table, and that one time in the stairwell which still made her shiver to think of) was _doing_ something to her; somehow strengthening rather than lessening the yearning she felt for Jaqen. She found that she did not grow accustomed to his absence. The burning inside of her that he had awakened with his kiss in the courtyard was now ever present and ever growing.

When she had seen him enter the armory and the door had shut with just the two of them on the one side of it, she was seized with a sort of madness; a desire to touch him and to _taste_ him; a desire she found it too difficult to suppress. And so, the girl had found herself once again in Jaqen's arms, and when he had lifted her a little against him, she had almost unconsciously buried her face against his neck, trying to hold back the tears she felt stinging her eyes as she did.

Determined to stop herself from crying and highlighting her deplorable _weakness,_ she sought a distraction; to occupy herself in such a way that she would not think of the fact that though he was holding her now, it was merely a prelude to another farewell and more long days and nights of suffering alone without him.

And so she had found his earlobe and when she took it between her teeth and the scent of cloves and ginger and leather had filled her nose, her sadness and apprehension had been replaced by a sweet ache that she had only known since Jaqen's return from Westeros; a sensation that clouded her thoughts and made it hard for her to breathe normally and should have frightened her, had she the wits then to feel fear.

Now, walking along the passageway and up the stairs to the main level of the temple, her wits slowly returned to her and the girl's cheeks began to burn as she thought about what had just transpired. _What must Jaqen think of her?_

As the Cat entered the main temple chamber, she was forced to leave that question unanswered, as the handsome man was pacing by the pool, waiting for her and looking _impatient._ Indeed, during the last week, she had learned that his _impatience_ was nearly as much of a defining characteristic as his smirk.

"I am _so_ pleased I did not have to send a search party to the armory looking for you, little wolf," he said sarcastically.

_I am glad of it as well,_ she thought, biting her lip and coloring a bit more. Taking her look for contrition rather than relief, the handsome man's face softened and he quirked one corner of his mouth up, looping his arm through the girl's and walking toward the ebony and weirwood doors.

"Did you at least find suitable weapons?"

"Of course," the Cat scoffed, proud of the normalcy of her tone. "Why do you think it took me so long? I'm very particular about which blades I carry." _And which ear lobes I nibble._

The handsome man began to explain her task for the day: a training exercise in Braavos, gathering certain information of interest to the order along the docks of Ragman's. Several ships from Westeros had docked within the past two days and they were sure to be carrying fresh news. The requirements were simple enough, she thought, until he tacked on, "I'll be hunting you the whole time. If I find you before you make it back to the temple, you will have failed."

She rolled her eyes but knew better than to complain of the unfairness of the task (since he could change his face as often as he liked during the exercise and she had yet to earn hers).

In the end, the Cat was successful, partly due to her natural stealth, and partly because she had not proceeded straight to Ragman's but rather had detoured to the market, where the waif had asked her to purchase a few items needed in her workshop. While there, the girl had also managed to piece together a reasonable disguise out of bits of purchased and pilfered clothes. _She was rather fond of the hat, a wide-brimmed affair with one side curled up and pinned with a dark feather such as the Myrish sailors sometimes wore. She might have to keep it._ Both the disguise and the delayed timing of her jaunt around Ragman's Harbor had thrown the handsome master off of her trail and she managed to enter the temple at dusk, just ahead of him.

"Well done, little wolf," he had complimented when he finally caught up to her. "The hat suits."

"I thought so," the girl said amiably.

"You will perhaps find it cumbersome when we spar," the master told her, smirking at her crestfallen expression. "Training room, in a quarter hour."

"I'll just go give the waif her things from the market," the Cat replied with a sigh.

It was only then that the assassin noted the small sack in her hand and his tone was a mix of incredulity and disgust as he asked, "You went _shopping?_ "

And just like that, her mood was light again.

"A quarter hour, was it?" she sang, bouncing off toward the waif's workroom.

As she rounded the corner and pushed through the door of the workroom, she thought on the sudden intensity of the activity in the temple, at least as it involved her. There were endless expectations, it seemed, and the girl did all that was required. Sparring, serving in the temple, occasionally helping Umma in the kitchen, small outings into town on various errands for the Kindly Man, for the handsome man, for the waif (such as the one she had just performed while she was meant to be training with her handsome master. She was certain she would hear more about _that_ in the training room). It seemed strange that _the Cat_ was sent to perform such menial tasks when any of the younger acolytes might have done the job, but in truth, she was glad to keep her mind occupied.

Every minute the girl was sparring with the handsome man or discussing something with the Kindly Man or distilling substances from plants with the waif was a minute she was not consumed with her anger and sadness about Olive's fate or her worry for her brother (wherever he was—he still had not returned to the temple). Every minute she was busy with the work set out for her by the order was a minute she was not dedicating to pitifully pining for Jaqen.

And perhaps that was the point of it all, she thought vaguely, but then dismissed the notion. To accept it would be to accept that the order was aware of all her emotional turmoil (and that they cared enough to intervene. The idea did not sit well with her, for several reasons).

Still, the outing to Ragman's had been a sort of respite, too. That her training at the hands of the handsome man was beneficial was not in doubt, but she had spent hours sneaking about the docks and purchasing things for the waif in the market and _those_ were hours she had _not_ spent with the handsome man thrusting the heel of his hand into her breastbone or jabbing his elbow into her gut. But, it was not to last. In ten minutes, she would be at it again.

She was getting much better at defending against these attacks, truthfully, but still sported her share of bruises. Her most recent crop of black and blue marks were only now starting to recede and she still bore a bit of stiffness in her muscles from her vigorous training. It was worth it, the girl reasoned, as her instinct for hand-to-hand combat was rapidly increasing and her comfort with the bastard blade her master had insisted she start using was much improved. But still, sometimes one just wanted a long soak in a hot tub…

The Cat said as much to the handsome assassin as they ended their sparring session an hour later.

"Eat first, bath after," he told her gruffly as he took her blades from her and replaced them in their respective wall racks. "You're not to miss another supper."

The girl turned wide, grey eyes upon the master, making them almost _shiny_ , and clasping her hands beneath her chin in her best approximation of a _distressed damsel,_ cried with false sincerity as she fluttered her lashes, "Oh, you _do_ care for me! I just _knew_ it!"

The master assassin gave the apprentice a withering look, and seeing it, she tried unsuccessfully to stifle her rising giggle. He merely shook his head at her then, and then sent her on her way, directing her to go straight to the dining hall.

"Save me a seat, little wolf, I'll be there shortly."

She snorted at that, knowing that he would sit near the head of the table, as he always did (next to Jaqen), and not deign to place himself at her side, in the middle of the table where the older acolytes sat.

As the Cat limped down the long corridor, she reflected on her time since her return from Biro's to the House of Black and White. The girl concluded that she really should not complain too harshly about her situation in the temple. Despite the principal elder's command that she limit (well, _cease_ ) her interaction with the Lorathi assassin, she still had Jaqen's devotion (and his concern, it seemed. _And_ his ear lobe…) in addition to the handsome man's seemingly undivided attention. The former filled her with butterflies and racing heartbeats and gave her feet that felt as if they barely touched the ground (both figuratively _and_ literally, as when he had held her tight and lifted her off her feet earlier in the armory). The latter filled her with purpose and made her feel strong and confident and led her to the belief that she was capable of _anything_ , despite the bruising and the aches and the occasional unwelcome kiss.

_It was unwelcome, not matter how her flesh tingled beneath the handsome man's lips. It was only learning, and meant nothing. It was a tool, the same as her training blades. It was education;_ the best sort _, he had said. She curled her lip slightly at the memory and then laughed a bit, shaking her head as she recalled it._

And with the impossibility of bringing her problems to Jaqen, and the continued absence of the Bear, the handsome man was the only person to whom she could talk about... _things._

_Not that they did a lot of talking. Mostly, she listened and he instructed. And teased (about Jaqen; about her reactions to his own touches; about her attire)._

_"I miss the gown from Biro's," he had told her once, eyeing her boy's doublet and loose breeches distastefully as they rested after sparring._

_"You're the only one," she sneered, her head leaned back against the stone wall of the training room. Her eyes were closed and she did not bother to open them as she replied. She could well-imagine the smirk on his handsome face; she did not need to see it to know it was there._

_"Oh, I think not, little wolf. I'd venture to say my very serious Lorathi brother misses it, too."_

_She had opened her eyes then and looked at the master to discern his meaning, but his expression was inscrutable and she could not decide if he spoke from any real knowledge or was merely guessing. She finally looked away, deciding that the handsome man only desired to get a rise out of her._

_Another time, as they danced around the training room and when the handsome assassin made a grab at her, he managed to tear the seam of her tunic sleeve, laying part of her shoulder and upper arm bare. It was no serious matter, as she was not particularly attached to any piece of clothing (save one, and she would not wear it for sparring), but when the master had pinned her to the wall briefly, his gaze moved to the bare flesh and he remarked upon a scar he saw there. It brought to mind her master, and their reunion in the courtyard garden of the temple, and she could almost feel Jaqen's calloused thumb there once again, stroking the imperfect flesh and teasing her about the time he had seen more of her than he should have. And then she felt her face grow hot and red, leaving the handsome master flummoxed._

_"If you're going to blush so shamelessly, you must at least give me an indication as to the cause," he scolded her, but she had slipped from his grasp then and he found that she had sprung onto his back_ quick as a snake _, holding a slender blade at his throat._

_"Some secrets," she whispered haltingly in his ear, "a girl would keep for herself."_

The Cat entered the dining hall and found a seat diagonally across from Loric. As she took her place, he smiled at her in his usual, worshipful fashion. Honestly, the boy seemed far too sweet to slit anyone's throat. She could not fathom what had led the order to accept him as an acolyte. The girl could sense none of the requisite darkness within him. She thought perhaps he might make a good priest, however.

"I was wondering if you would show up, Cat," Loric chirped at her, the apples of his rosy cheeks shiny in the candlelight.

"I've been instructed _not_ to miss suppers," she confided, flitting her eyes towards the upper end of the table. The Kindly Man was seated, as was the waif, the stern-faced master, and the lordling, but Jaqen had not joined them as of yet. She stuffed her disappointment down deep, telling herself it was a _good_ thing if he did not show at all, as it would save her from having to pretend he wasn't there. But she could not convince herself adequately, for she just longed to _see_ him (a lie, she knew, for as soon as she saw him, she would crave his touch, and receiving that, would want his kiss, and after that… just more. More and more).

The Cat shook her head a little, earning a quizzical look from Loric, but she just smiled at the boy. The seat next to hers was empty and she harbored the hope that the Bear would soon pull the chair back and sit next to her, grinning and saying, "I have _so_ much to tell you!" but she told herself she needed to quit existing in daydreams and face reality: she was unlikely to see the Bear before her own trial, and even then, they might be separated for months, or even years, depending on how their assignments were doled out.

_I didn't even get to say goodbye,_ she thought sadly.

Before she could ponder that disappointment much longer, the seat next to her _was_ filled. The handsome man had not been japing when he asked her to save a seat for him.

The Cat covered her shock by saying, rather savagely, "Shouldn't you be at the _upper end_?"

He glanced at her haughtily and let his eyes wander down to the place where the laces of her blouse had loosened slightly, revealing just a hint more of the snowy flesh of her chest than she was otherwise prone to show.

"I rather like the view from here," he answered in a matter-of-fact tone, beginning to grin when he saw the girl snatch at her neckline and tighten the laces, knotting them together in a rather flustered way. She could feel the heat creeping up her neck and jaw, so _of course_ , that was when _Jaqen_ entered the hall. He took his usual place but spared a brief look at her, raising his eyebrow when he saw her flushed appearance, her clumsy fiddling with the laces at her neck, and his brother's plastered grin.

_What is Jaqen thinking?_ she wondered, cursing the smirking assassin next to her inwardly for once again setting up the scene just perfectly for her master to draw the worst possible conclusion based on the evidence. _If there is anything the handsome man is truly a master of, it's giving the wrong impression!_

The girl ate quickly, both to extricate herself from her precarious position (next to the handsome man, and diagonally across from Jaqen) and so that she might have the hot bath she longed for before retiring. When the banter turned to friendly debating, the Cat excused herself and stood from her place. Conscious of Jaqen's gaze upon her as she rose, she turned quickly to leave but before she could move, the handsome man grabbed her wrist and pulled her back toward him, reaching up to clasp her neck and pull her down to him, whispering an instruction in her ear.

"To the bath and to bed, little wolf. Do not tarry."

The way he spoke in an overly-breathy whisper tickled her ear, causing gooseprickles to form on her arms and making her draw her shoulder up toward her ear as she bit back her giggle. She couldn't help but to let her eyes flicker to Jaqen's and though his face might as well have been made of stone, his bronze eyes burned and bore into hers. Or, so it seemed to her.

Though the instruction had been completely innocent, the way in which it was delivered was meant to elicit just such a reaction from the Lorathi master, she was sure.

" _Grow up_ ," the girl hissed quietly before pulling away from the handsome man. And then she left the hall, thinking, _I can explain to Jaqen later, if he even really cares._

She was limping a little. Every bone in her battered body ached, and she half-suspected at least a partially cracked rib from the way she had to stint herself when she breathed too deeply. It felt like someone was running her chest through with a red hot poker when she coughed. The handsome man _called_ it training, but it seemed as if he delighted in throwing her against walls and knocking her to the ground. Jabbing her in the ribs seemed a particularly favorite past time. The last time she had sported so many bruises, she was half a child, toppling down stairwells as she chased scrawny, uncooperative cats, undertaking her first lessons with Syrio Forel. Even _he_ hadn't been as ruthless as her handsome master, though.

The girl was never so glad to arrive at the door to the bath as she was then, and she pushed eagerly inside (after petting the head of the black and white cat that was lounging just outside of the door), grateful to find several kettles of water steaming over the hearth. _Truly, the Many-Faced god must love me,_ she thought, grabbing towels to hold the hot handles of the kettles as she poured the water. Once the tub was full enough, she shed her clothes and climbed in, hissing slightly at the scalding temperature but not letting that deter her from sinking further into the steaming water. After a few moments of enjoying the way the heat soothed her muscles and the deep ache in her bones, the Cat grabbed for the chunk of soap that had been left next to the tub and began cleaning herself, creating the mounds of scentless froth that always resulted from the exercise.

When the water had cooled to the point it could no longer even be called _tepid,_ the girl stood, shaking off rivulets of water before stepping out of the tub and reaching for the pile of soft linen stacked in on the chair. She stood in front of the warm hearth and dried herself thoroughly. Now, her hair damp and her skin scrubbed clean, there was no evidence of the buckets of perspiration that the handsome man had rung from her earlier as they sparred. She was loath to don her sweat-stained clothes again and cursed herself for lacking the foresight to bring her shift or robe or a clean set of clothes with her into the bath. She looked ruefully at the linen wraps and thought, _well, everyone is likely still in the dining hall, and there's quite a bit of linen here…_

It should not have surprised the girl that Jaqen caught her leaving the bath, with only linen wraps twisted around her body. Her damp hair was trailing down her back rather than arranged over her shoulders, exposing her more recent injuries. She knew by the way her master eyed the bruises on her bare shoulder that he was not pleased, but he hid his displeasure well when he spoke to her, briefly, as they passed.

"A lovely girl's shoulders are meant to be white, not purple," was all he said to her. She gave him a wan smile, shrugging, her lids heavy with fatigue.

"You should have seen me a few days ago. This is an improvement."

He longed to take her in his arms then. He could imagine the feel of her, almost _see_ the top of her head below his chin, her dark hair redolent of _her_. He could call up the feeling he knew it would rouse in him, the combination of deep satisfaction at having her once again pressed into himself, close and protected, and the even deeper ache, physical proof of his unfulfilled _want_. The feel of her cool, bruised skin beneath his lips as he kissed her hurts away, the soft angle of her neck where he would place his nose lightly, the curve of her waist and hip, where his hand would rest; all of these visions bloomed wildly in his mind as his fathomless gaze fell upon her there in the dim of the passageway. He stood near her, _so near_ , but not touching; not speaking; his voice a strangled thing that he did not dare allow to leave his throat.

"Valar morghulis, lovely girl," he finally managed.

"Valar dohaeris," she replied timidly, and then scurried past him, embarrassed to be found (again) wrapped in a thin, wet piece of linen in the corridors of the House of Black and White. Jaqen swallowed hard and then felt something on his leg. He looked down to see a cat, its back raised and its tail curled, rubbing against his shins. He regarded the cat briefly and then sighed, walking away.

* * *

She bared her teeth and gave a low, rumbling growl. _Kingslayer._

"My lady, do not let this tarnished lion distress you," a rich, soothing voice comforted her and she felt a strong hand stroke her back languidly. The Kingslayer _sneered_ at that, showing a hard, shiny hand.

"Gold doesn't tarnish, bastard."

"It wasn't your hand I referred to, Kingslayer."

The golden knight rolled his eyes and gave an exaggerated sigh, settling his gaze back on her companion after a few seconds.

"Honestly, you kill _one_ king, and you're forever branded _Kingslayer_. Where is the fairness in that?" Jaime queried in mocking tones. "I've killed nearly half a score of Freys, just since my last nameday, and no one calls me _Freyslayer._ It doesn't even make sense!"

A very tall, very broad woman entered the circle of light around the campfire and interrupted their banter.

"Gendry, that beast makes the horses uneasy. I really wish you wouldn't bring her into the center of the camp."

"It seems we're not wanted, m'lady," Gendry told her, turning his back to the fire and the woman. "Let's find somewhere else to warm our hides."

"Gendry," the knightly woman called after him, sounding regretful, "come back. I didn't mean..."

But the dark knight was striding away from her and the fire, and the woman's voice grew fainter. Arya took a long look at the impressive woman and her infamous companion, snarling before she trotted after Gendry.

_We will meet again, Kingslayer, and then, we'll have a reckoning,_ the girl thought, moaning a bit in her bed across the narrow sea.

When the wolf caught up to the bastard knight, he chuckled to her.

"You should not take offense, m'lady. You _are_ pretty intimidating. They don't all know what a gentle soul you really have."

The wolf growled menacingly. _If there was one thing she did not have, it was a_ gentle soul. _Neither she nor the wolf could boast such a lofty possession._

Gendry laughed, but acquiesced, saying, "No, you are correct, m'lady. _Gentle_ is perhaps the wrong word, but I'm no poet and often do not know the best way to say a thing. It's just that sometimes, when I look into your eyes, it's almost as if I can see... well, _something_. Something of _her_. But it's more dream than real."

The wolf whined.

"Do you dream of her, m'lady?" the man ask, slowing his stride. "Do wolves dream at all? Because _I_ do. I dream of her and when I wake up, _this_ feels like the dream. Does that make sense?"

"Boy, speaking to a direwolf as if she were your closest friend is bound to start tongues wagging," said a gruff voice from the shadows. Gendry and Nymeria both looked up to see Harwin, leaning against a tree. He drew a few steps closer to them.

"That's the benefit of having a direwolf as my closest friend," Gendry answered the Northman. "If anyone offends me, she can just eat them."

Harwin snorted, and then warned, "This hell-hound has a mind of her own. Watch that _you_ don't offend her, or you'll find that it's you she's eating."

"I will, I swear it," she muttered in her sleep as Jaqen looked down at her, watching her face tense. "I will eat your heart, you bastard." Even in her sleep, she sounded fierce and even in her dream, she knew she didn't mean it.

It was the instant lightening of the night of her dream that pulled her from Westeros. There was a burning she could detect through her lids and she slowly opened her eyes to find her cell awash in light. Her taper was lit. The girl's heart jumped a bit as she saw a man's form standing by her door.

"Lovely girl, whose heart are you vowing to eat? Not a man's, he hopes."

_That half-smile. The dimple. Spice and soap._ The Cat rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands, scrubbing her sleep away.

"Jaqen," the girl whispered, caught between elation and apprehension. "What are you doing here?

"A man found that he had to see you."

_And it was true, at least if he ever wished to sleep again. He had waited for her to come to him, his bolt undone night after night, but she never had, and so, long after those in the temple had drifted off to their cells and gone to sleep, he had lain in his bed, staring at his ceiling, thinking of her, irrationally hoping that just his willing her to come to him would make it so._

She started to sit up in bed but winced, the pain in her ribs stopping her. He approached her swiftly and slipped his arm under her for support.

"Where does it hurt, lovely girl?"

" _Everywhere_ ," she groaned.

Her master smiled to see that she was sleeping in _a man's favorite blouse,_ but bit his smile back when he saw the bruises on her neck and traced their snaking path with his eyes until they disappeared beneath the collar.

"Brutality is not training," he remarked and his voice was steely.

"It can be," she returned with a weak smile, sighing gratefully as he helped her into a seated position. In mere seconds, his boots were on her floor and he had slipped behind her and seated himself on her bed, his back braced against her headboard. He pulled her back into him and she was soon reclined comfortably against her master, her head thrown back onto his shoulder. The girl turned toward him so that her forehead pressed into his neck.

"I've missed you," she told him in a small voice, almost as if she were unsure if she was allowed to say such a thing; unsure if it would offend her master for her to give voice to her weakness.

"And a man has missed his lovely girl," he murmured, gently stroking her neck with his long fingers. She could not help but to shiver, almost curling her head into herself, reacting to his touch. She heard a slight laugh from behind her, but she could not stifle her response.

"Do you wish for a man to stop touching you, lovely girl? You seem... _uncomfortable._ "

" _Too_ comfortable," she corrected. "And I do not wish for you to stop touching me, no. But... perhaps you should. Perhaps..."

"Shhh," Jaqen interrupted, "a man _must_ touch you if he is to soothe your aching."

Arya knew he meant that he intended to use one of his healing tricks learned in Asshai, but still she thought, _It is your touch that is causing my aching._ Soon, the Lorathi's fingers were kneading and pressing on all the necessary places and before long, her pain had lessened.

"I am really most fortunate to have gotten you as my master," the girl sighed, relaxing into him more fully.

"Indeed?" her mentor asked conversationally, thinking back on his _choice;_ his _coin;_ his lovely girl as a child in a blood-smeared shift, barefoot and so small behind the melted, black walls of that desolate castle. _Luck had had little to do with it._

"Mmm," she responded affirmatively, closing her eyes. Her master took her hands in his own and then wrapped their arms around her middle, which had the effect of surrounding her in a cocoon of arms. He nuzzled her gently behind her ear for a while before he spoke again.

"A man has been meaning to ask you about something his handsome brother said recently. Something about a _kiss?_ "

At her pause, Jaqen believed his lovely girl to be confused by the reference and he felt an embarrassing amount of relief as he thought, _She doesn't know anything about it. He was lying._

"A kiss between a man's brother and you," he clarified as an afterthought, feeling light.

"Which one?"

" _Which one?_ " the assassin nearly choked in disbelief. "Lovely girl, how many of these kisses have there been?"

Her eyes rolled upward and to the left, narrowing a bit as she chewed her lip in concentration, trying to recall. _How many had there been?_ she wondered and her nose wrinkled in the most charming way.

"Let's see... the corridor at Biro's, most surprising and unpleasant," she recounted under her breath. "Mattine's cell, that's twice... Here, in this bed, three. No, wait, maybe four... five? Well, it depends on how you count them. What do you consider a kiss, anyway? Well, really, I was half-asleep so I can't be certain..."

The casual way she flipped through the occurrences in her head astonished him. How had he known _nothing_ of this?

"What does a girl mean by _here, in this bed when she was half-asleep_?" he demanded, a bit more stridently than he had intended. It had been a while since Jaqen H'ghar had been truly _shocked_ by anything, and it was taking him a moment to adjust to the uncomfortable sensation. "Why was this _handsome master_ in a girl's chamber as she slept?"

He felt an unfamiliar emotion rising up within him just then. He could not put a name to it, but he had begun to sense it more and more lately, and this time, it brought with it a sort of vague intention, gnawing at his edges, trying to burrow into his core; a desire that he recognized as _murderous_ , and his own undisciplined response startled him. He drew in a deep breath in an attempt to rule his thoughts, and awaited her reply.

"He came to wake me up, to train," she said cautiously, sensing her master's tension. "This was the day he stared at me through the midday meal as if he wanted to stab me."

Jaqen chuckled in spite of himself.

"Ah, the day a willful girl neglected to attend her training."

"Well, it was as much _your_ fault as mine!" the girl insisted. "You see? _This_ is why love is weakness. I was too consumed with my thoughts of _you_ to remember my duty!"

"That is a serious charge, lovely girl," the assassin chided. "A man is no thief, yet you accuse him of stealing your concentration."

"I only speak the truth," she whispered, and a tinge of desolation colored her voice, "though I am powerless to do anything about it."

He had meant to drill her more about this abundance of _kisses_ it seemed she had received from her new master, but her tone stopped him. To hear her admit, in her own way, that she loved him, and then for her to sound so _bleak_ on the heels of such an admission, disturbed him. He drew their arms more tightly around her middle and placed a kiss on her jaw. The girl turned her face instinctively toward his and their lips met, her mouth opening a little as she sighed into him. Jaqen traced the soft margin of his lovely girl's upper lip lightly with his tongue, but stopped and withdrew from her as her breath hitched. He did not wish to frighten her.

"Oh," she whispered, "I wish you would never stop. _Never never never_ …" Her voice trailed off, leaving only a soft suggestion of her want in the air around them.

_She doesn't understand what she's saying,_ the assassin reminded himself.

Jaqen kept his arms wrapped securely around the girl's slight frame, but he leaned his head back against the hard wood of the headboard, keeping his lips a safe distance from her soft skin. Arya gave him a small, humming whine of protest but did not persist after she heard him laughing lightly. She had matters she wished to discuss with him, and as glorious as the feel of his lips was, kissing her master did limit her capacity for conversation.

"I'm glad you are here," she began softly.

"No more than a man," he assured her.

"No, I mean, I have been needing to speak with you, but have had little opportunity."

"Oh! Well, then, a man is at your disposal," Jaqen said in an officious tone.

"Olive is dead," she began, and he was surprised to detect a slight quivering in her voice. "And Will. And Staaviros."

"Yes," the assassin acknowledged. He had known that they would eventually discuss this, but he silently cursed that it had to be _now_. He waited for her to continue.

"And it was done by the Bear's hand."

"The serving girl, yes. The others were not his work."

She considered the information for a moment, not shocked that Jaqen possessed such knowledge but dreading what she had to ask him next.

"Were they… _your_ work?"

He sighed, regretting the hurt in her words but also unable to deny the part of him that was a Faceless master; the part that knew she was an acolyte; the part that needed to affirm that his lovely girl understood she should not be troubled by these things.

"Would it disturb a girl if it _had been_ a man's work?"

"So you're saying it wasn't?"

"No, lovely girl. This thing was not done by a man's hand, though you will recall that a man once told you such things must be _witnessed._ "

"You were there," she stated flatly.

"Just so."

She blew out a long breath and slumped a little.

"Was there no other way?" the girl whispered.

"This is not for you to question," her master reminded her a bit coldly. It pained him, but she needed to remember her place in the order, lest her hesitations and questioning be viewed as disrespect.

_And what will your own disregard for your master's instruction be regarded as, if not disrespect?_ a voice from deep inside of him queried. He pushed the thought aside, thinking only of his desire for his lovely girl to understand the need for her acceptance of the ways of the order; unwilling to admit that what they did now was folly.

"I know, but I cannot help myself," she replied, sounding forlorn. "They were so kind to me. They helped me, at a time when it wasn't safe for me to be here."

The Lorathi recalled very well. He pressed his lips into her hair and rocked her gently from side to side, hoping the gesture would give her some comfort.

"A man had feared a girl would be asked to do this thing," he murmured, and then instantly cursed his loose tongue.

"What do you mean?" the apprentice asked in confusion.

"When it became clear that the order was not bringing your friend who is no knight to Braavos, it seemed logical that you would be asked to give the gift to this tavern wench. A man is pleased that this did not turn out to be the case, for he knows how attached you were to the girl."

"My friend who is no knight? _Gendry?_ But… why would the _order_ care about _Gendry?_ " she demanded, furrowing her brow. "Wait… why would you think the order meant to _bring Gendry here?_ "

"A man was mistaken," he said, pulling one hand free of hers to smooth her hair and sweep it back gently behind her ear. He leaned over and nibbled at that ear, as she had done to him that morning. She recognized his attempt to distract her and shrugged away from him, pulling completely free of his arms and turning in her bed, facing him on her knees.

"Jaqen," she said seriously, "what in the Seven bloody _Hells_ are you talking about?"

"Sweet child, you have still to earn your face."

"So?" she said, her brow still wrinkled in confusion. She felt a chill creeping up her spine. Slowly, understanding dawned on her and her heart felt like ice.

"Lovely girl," the assassin half-warned, half-pled.

"The Rat killed Robert Stone… Was he… was the master mummer somehow _connected_ to the Rat?"

Even as she asked the question, she knew the answer. The Rat had come to the temple after running away from or perhaps being abandoned by a mummers' troupe as a young child. She could _well guess_ who had been the leader of that troupe.

"And then the Bear killed _Olive,"_ the girl added slowly, her mouth opening to gasp as she looked at Jaqen's expressionless face, "but you had thought _I_ might be asked to…"

Arya withdrew further from her master, sliding off her heels until her bottom rested on her mattress and her back abutted the footboard of her bed. She lifted her eyes to Jaqen's and waited for him to deny the suspicion behind her words.

"You were going to allow me to sacrifice Gendry," she finally spoke. "You thought that was what the order would direct me to do and you didn't warn me. You would have let me kill him!"

Her own anger surprised her. Did she care so much for Gendry, or was she just upset that Jaqen had told her nothing; had not warned her? She _was_ angry, whatever the cause, her eyes blazing like molten steel, her breaths coming in short, noisy bursts from her nose. She thought her mentor might retreat from her anger; that he might make some apology or at least give her an explanation laced with guilt and apology. This was not to be so.

"A man cares _nothing_ for this boy who is no knight!" Jaqen hissed. "There is only one thing a man cares about, and that is _Arya Stark_!"

She was taken aback by the vehemence of his words; by his use of her _name,_ in this place.

"A thousand bastard knights could be sacrificed at the altar of your safety! Do you think a man would weep for them? If his lovely girl was safe and protected? Do you think a man would feel guilt for this? Anyone who would do you harm, a man would kill! Any action that could be undertaken to prevent that harm, a man would perform! Any sacrifice that must be made, a man would make it!"

The girl gaped at her master, stunned to silence and stillness.

It was _sacrilege_. Jaqen was a true believer and yet here he was, professing his own heresy, spectacularly, _and all for her sake._

There was a gravity to his words that she grasped and yet still could not fully fathom; could not fully reconcile. She danced at the edges of understanding, afraid that in shedding her ignorance, she would be unable to avoid succumbing to the despair that would accompany the knowledge. The idea refused to shrink from her, though. The idea demanded recognition; insisted on being defined. It was the idea that he... _loved_ her, in the deepest, truest way a man could love a girl... a _woman._ He was giving verity to that which she had _always_ known to be a lie; that in their own dark and strange way, they were Florian and Jonquil. They were the living embodiment of the tales of gallant knights and lovelorn ladies; sacrificing all for love, against all reason and sense; forsaking all that had defined their lives, _especially_ his, heedless of the immense consequences to be borne; without regard for the heavy price that would be demanded of them.

With one seething declaration, Jaqen had turned her world on its head. She could never have dreamed that his dedication to her was so _complete_ ; could have never hoped for it; could never have believed the depths of terror such dedication would instill in her.

A feeling rose in her; something akin to panic. She looked at her master's face, at his stony and resolute expression, and the reality of what he had said crashed in on her like a great, icy avalanche. A single thought grabbed her, invading her mind and refusing to free her from the fear it evoked.

_I shall lose him. I shall lose him. I shall lose him. I shall lose him!_

This declaration of his… this _assertion…_

The _absurdity_ of it! The complete and utter nonsense of it all! It was the most immense foolishness and the greatest folly.

She burst out laughing, a deep, hoarse, throaty sound, startling in its force. She laughed and laughed and laughed until she cried and then she cried until she sobbed.

"Oh, Jaqen," she choked out through her tears. "We really are _doomed._ " Echoes of her words in the garden.

He reached for her and pulled her to him, pressing his face into her hair, inhaling deeply as he closed his eyes and let her, the _scent_ of her, the _feel_ of her pervade his senses.

"A man knows this, lovely girl. A man knows."

* * *

Jaqen had left her shortly after that, pressing a sweet kiss upon her brow at the last, but it did little to assuage her fears. The girl was powerless against the strength of her master's love of her. She felt utterly torn, utterly bereft, for she could not walk away from him (and _did not want to_ ) without destroying herself (and him as well, according to his own pronouncement), but she knew that if she did _not_ walk away from him, their destruction at the hands of the order was assured. She _felt_ it. The truth of it was heavy in her bones. What was she to do with this deep and unrelenting _knowing_?

About her trial, she had drawn her own conclusions from the little he had said to her, and also from what he did not deny as she spoke. That she would need to _kill_ in order to earn her face was not surprising, but that she would have to _kill someone she knew, perhaps even someone she cared for,_ was an undeniable shock. It was something that was strictly at odds with what she knew of the rules of the order. _Had she not served at council meetings, listening in silence to the masters refuse assignments because they knew the intended target? Only when a master who did_ not _know the name offered up for death could be found, would the task be assigned._

Earning a face, it seemed, was a different prospect altogether.

But who in Braavos did she know who might suffice for such a test? Jaqen told her that the order had not brought Gendry from Westeros, though he had believed they might (an indication of how far the order was willing to go to support its precious rituals). _And she knew the blue-eyed knight to be safe, anyway, with Nymeria at his side, if her dreams were to be believed._ So, who was left to her? _Vorena? Lidia? Some of the whores along Ragman's who had been indulgent of her when she was just a scrawny child pedaling Brusco's daily offerings?_

_Brusco,_ she thought with a chill. _His daughters, the bedmates of her youth._

_Would the order ever make such a sacrifice? Brusco had proven himself to be a useful person to the Faceless Men, but that had not saved Staaviros._ Still, she did not think it likely that she would be asked to give the gift to the fishmonger, nor to his daughters.

She swallowed hard, feeling more and more uneasy as another name crept into her thoughts. She clenched her eyes shut as if in pain, not wanting to think of it but unable to stop herself.

" _Syrio_ ," she whispered.

* * *

As the Cat struggled with unpleasant thoughts in her cell, her master walked the corridor toward his own bedchamber hoping that his having seen his lovely girl would allow him some peace so that he might once again sleep. However, before he reached his door, he was confronted by his _handsome_ brother leaving his own chamber, fully dressed.

The smirking master stopped short, surprised to see the Lorathi before him, but recovered quickly.

"Valar morghulis, brother. You are certainly up late," the handsome man observed, curling one corner of his mouth up, taking on his familiar sardonic expression.

"Valar dohaeris, brother. A man might say the same of you."

"Just so. I wonder if we are awake _for the same reason_?" Here, the teasing master's smile widened a bit.

"A man does not imagine so," Jaqen replied icily. "Or, at least, he fervently hopes not. For your own sake."

The handsome man's eyebrows shot up and he regarded his brother carefully, saying, "Indeed? I am most gratified that you are so concerned for my well-being, brother. I hope you will likewise be gratified to know that I am taking _very particular care_ of your apprentice."

"So a man hears," the Lorathi replied with a quiet menace, clearly not convinced of his brother's altruistic intentions.

"Oh? Well, do not worry, brother. I intend to continue my close attentions."

Jaqen tilted his head slightly, examining his brother's smug expression before he spoke.

"A man does not worry, and he will remember this _kindness,_ " Jaqen assured the handsome man ominously. After a thoughtful moment, he added, "A man will endeavor to _repay_ you for it... _properly_."

The handsome master bowed his head toward his brother in acknowledgment, saying, "I look forward to that day, brother."

And then he was gone.

All the peace Jaqen had garnered with his late night visit to his apprentice's cell had fled, and he was left wondering, once again, about the circumstances which had led to his brother's _close attentions_ to his lovely girl; wondering which circumstances would justify a handsome man's lips touching a girl's flesh.

* * *

With the girl's particular gift for quibbling, she convinced herself that _unsanctioned late night activities_ were not the same as _unsanctioned early morning activities_ and so she dressed quickly, pulling on her boots over her fitted breeches, slipping a blade into the narrow pocket. In the grey before the day had dawned, the Cat slipped over the garden wall in her usual way, her actions witnessed only by the black and white tom which followed her through the garden door. As she dropped to the other side, she looked grimly at the sky, wondering how quickly she could make it to the harbor and back. She would not be easy until she laid eyes upon Syrio, and she knew just where to find him; him _and_ his cart of cockles and mussels and fish. The handsome man had given her no instruction for the morning, and so he could not be angry with her for leaving the temple, she thought, but without much conviction.

The girl jogged most of the way there, using the exercise as an outlet for her nerves and her apprehension. As ever, there were multiple concerns buzzing in her skull just then, and she could not focus on one without it being superseded by another. Running freed her from the need to _think_. She concentrated then only on her breathing, on the feel of the cobblestones and earth beneath the soles of her boots, on the sun breaking the horizon and painting it with brilliant colors. When at last she reached the place she thought Syrio was like to be, she spotted him in the distance, his dark mop barely showing over the top of the cart.

_He's so young_ , she thought. She strode toward him.

"Cockles? Mussels? Fish, pretty lady?" he asked as she drew close, favoring her with his shy smile.

_He does not know me_ , she thought. _He only knows Mattine._

"What do you recommend, young master?" she asked pleasantly in perfect _Braavosi_ , perusing his offerings.

"It's all fresh," the boy assured her. "My master just sent me out not half an hour ago from the market."

"Ah, well then, I'd best have as many of your cockles as you can fit in a sack. I shall take them to my cook!"

"You have a cook?" the boy asked, making polite talk as he filled her order.

"Indeed. Some say the best in Braavos," she replied. "Umma is her name. She is the cook in the House of Black and White."

"The House of Black and White?" the boy asked excitedly, stopping his work. "I have been there! I ate her food! The honey cakes! They were one of the best things I have ever eaten!"

"Only _one_ of the best things?" the girl chided. "Don't let Umma hear you say that, she's like to swat your bottom!"

"Well, it's the truth," he insisted steadfastly. "They were very good, but my friend Mattine once made a crab and cheese pie that was the best thing I have ever eaten."

"Oh, did she?" the Cat asked the boy, smiling fondly at him.

"Yes! She's the reason I was even _there_ ," he confided. "In the temple, that is. She brought me there."

He looked up at the acolyte hopefully.

"I asked after her the next day, but no one had heard of her. Do _you_ know her? Do you know Mattine?"

The Cat dropped to one knee, looking into the boy's dark, sincere eyes and said, "Yes. Yes, I know Mattine. She is my friend."

The boy gasped in delight, clapping his two hands together.

"Oh! Then you can tell me where she is!"

"Well, yes, that's why I am here," the apprentice told the boy. "She asked me to find you, and to let you know that she had to travel far and away, back to her mother's family, in Myr."

"Oh," Syrio replied sadly, his eyes dropping to the ground. He looked deflated.

"But she told me, well, she asked me, rather, to keep an eye on you. She wanted me to make sure you were safe and happy."

"Oh! Well, I am," the boy assured her. "I'm six, so I can take good care of myself. I'm nearly all grown up now."

The Cat bit back her smile, nodding at him with a serious look.

"And Brusco lets me sleep on a soft palate in his kitchen, near the hearth," he continued. "It's warm there."

"I see now that it was silly of Mattine to worry for you," the girl told Syrio. "I shall certainly send word to her in Myr and let her know that you are quite capable of caring for yourself."

"Just so," the boy said, and in her mind, it was as if it was the first time she was hearing that turn of phrase, when Syrio Forel had uttered it to her as they discussed water dancing. She choked back the sudden tears she felt attempting to form. _Don't be stupid,_ she told herself, forcing her lips to form a smile as she gazed at the boy.

"Just the same," she told him, and he noted that her voice had taken on an odd quality, but he could not name it, "if you should find yourself in need of anything, you have only to come to the temple and ask for the Cat."

"The Cat," he repeated. "Is that you? You're the Cat?"

"Just so," she whispered, and then startled the boy by placing a quick kiss upon his cheek as she rose. "Take care, Syrio."

"And you, Cat!" the boy returned, handing her a bag of cockles. She placed more coin in his hand than was required for the purchase, and then left him there, on the docks.

* * *

While it was true that the Cat should have been paying more attention to her surroundings than to her thoughts about Syrio and her final trial (and her master's _tongue,_ which had also asserted itself and its _recent employment_ as a matter of _great importance,_ demanding its due consideration), it was also true that it was not strictly necessary for the handsome man to wrench her arm quite so forcefully as he grabbed her and pulled her into a narrow alley between a rather disreputable inn and a winesink just off Ragman's.

"Well, little wolf, you have once again astounded me with your capacity for defiance," he growled, pressing her into the brick of the alley wall quite firmly.

She gauged his mood, then her own, and settled on utilizing her specially honed talent for impudence.

"I am glad that I still have the power to astound you, master," she replied sweetly, a small smile playing on her lips. "Though I can profess no knowledge of what you mean by asserting I have shown any _defiance_."

" _No unsanctioned late night activities,_ " he reminded her through gritted teeth. " _No missed meals._ "

"As I recall, it was no missed _suppers_ ," the Cat retorted. "And as the sun has already risen, you can hardly claim this as a late night activity."

The girl reminded him too much of himself just then, and he recalled vaguely how she had once assured him that his words would not pour forth from her mouth. It had not occurred to him that he should have hoped she was right.

"Let me be clear, then," the master said, intending to state again his expectations of her.

"Oh, _please_ be clear," the apprentice sarcastically begged, irritating him _immensely_ with her interruption. The handsome man had had enough. He flipped the girl around, her chest pressed hard against the wall as he leaned into her, wrapping one arm around her neck and covering her insolent mouth with his palm. His other arm he looped around her elbows, pulling them back against him so that she could not move.

"This feels... _familiar_ ," he commented, jerking her arms harder as she struggled. She dropped her bag of cockles then. "Once again, it seems you have allowed yourself to be pinned. I thought I had taught you better, little wolf. We obviously have work to do in the training room."

She could not speak, but the meaning of the growl that emanated from her throat was fairly apparent.

"Now, as I was saying, you seem to require that what I _expect_ of you be more explicitly stated, so here it is: go nowhere unless you inform me first. Do not miss meals," here, he glanced down at the bag of cockles, then amended, "do not miss meals in the _temple_ , unless you are in the company of a master about town. And speaking of masters," he moved his mouth close to her ear and said in a low voice, "there is a certain master with whom you have been instructed to have no interaction. See that you obey this command."

The Cat's heart lurched a bit at these words and she wondered if the handsome man _knew_ something or if he merely spoke generally.

"Disobedience has consequences, little wolf," the assassin reminded the acolyte, echoing the Kindly Man's words to her, "the likes of which you cannot begin to imagine."

The girl grew very still beneath the press of the master's body and her mind grasped desperately at the stillness that eluded her.

"No need to speak," he assured her. "Just nod if you understand all I have said."

He felt her nod into the hand at her mouth, and, satisfied, he released her. She turned around and leaned back against the wall, one leg bent, pressing the sole of her boot against the brick in a casual posture. The Cat eyed the master coolly, giving no indication of being bothered by what had just transpired or by his very _nearness,_ for her bent knee was just brushing the outside of his own. She resisted the impulse to cross her arms over her chest, not wishing to give the appearance of defensiveness or discomfort. Instead, she ran one thumb over her mouth thoughtfully as she hooked the other over the waist of her breeches. Her fingers tapped lightly at the top of her pocket; the pocket containing her slim dagger.

"What are _you_ doing about town?" the Cat inquired breezily. "I know it could not be in pursuit of a wayward acolyte, since it is not for _you_ to come find _me._ You are the master here, after all."

_She had the most vexing habit of parroting the words of others back to them when it was least like to please them._

The handsome man looked somewhat _less_ handsome when he allowed that sour frown to mar his comely features. He stepped closer to her, the inside of her bent leg now pressed against the side of his thigh. The master grasped the thumb that was tracing her own lip and pulled it away, sliding his hand over her wrist and gently pressing the back of her hand against the wall next to her shoulder.

"Careful now," he warned in a low tone, "disobedience isn't the only thing that has consequences."

"Forgive me, master," the Cat responded in a voice burgeoning with youth and innocence and apology; so much so that he snorted at its sheer _excess._ "I only wondered if perhaps you had come out to buy cockles for Umma. I'd hate for us both to show up to the temple bearing the same gift."

"Are you _batting_ your eyelashes at me, little wolf?" the assassin scoffed. "If you wish to know whether or not I came here to do some harm to your _pot boy_ , you have only to ask."

"Well?" she asked, ceasing her wheedling and taking on a demanding tone. Her fingers slipped into her pocket, gripping lightly at the top of her knife hilt. With one swift motion, the handsome man had captured that wrist, too, and pressed it next to her other shoulder, leaning harder against her.

"No, my girl, I did not come out to the docks at some ungodly hour to cause any harm to a toddler."

"Don't let _him_ hear you call him that," the Cat advised, smirking at the thought. _He's nearly all grown up now; he said so._ "Why did you come here, then?"

"Oh, little wolf, need I say it? _Some secrets, a man would keep for himself,_ " he mocked. "Not every task I perform for the order is yours to know about."

"I'm not your girl," she finally muttered, rather weakly to his ear, as if she was unable to think of else to say.

"No, I think we've established that," he commented. "It's merely a turn of phrase. Why does it trouble you so? Are you, perhaps, less certain than you seem? Is that why you need to continually reassert the fact?"

"What? What are you even…"

"Have you discussed it with him?"

"Discussed _what?_ " the apprentice demanded, allowing a little anger to creep into her voice. Belatedly, she added, "And who is _him_?"

The handsome man smirked at that last.

"I can understand your confusion," he continued sympathetically, ignoring her questions and the developing scowl on her face. "You are _so very young_ , after all. How can you be expected to understand what it is that you _want_?"

"Ugh! What are you talking about!"

"Those feelings, at your age, they are only natural," the master said soothingly. "Just because you tremble when I kiss you…"

Her barking laugh interrupted him.

"Tremble? Bah! I _never!_ As I recall, I laughed. Uncontrollably!"

"Oh, yes," he pretended to recall. "In Mattine's cell. But I was referring to the morning I woke you with a kiss after shaking your shoulders repeatedly did me no good. I recall then that you _shivered_ rather than laughed."

"But… but…" she sputtered, suddenly mortified, "that was because I thought you were…"

The girl sucked her breath in quickly, stopping herself just in time.

The handsome man leaned his face close to hers, brushing along her jaw lightly with his nose and his lips. She closed her eyes and willed herself to breath evenly, not allowing any _shivering_ or _trembling_ to betray her.

"You thought I was…?" he prompted, the end of his words a question. She remained silent. His lips found the spot on her neck just beneath the angle of her jaw and he breathed gently into her ear. She might have mastery of her shivering, but she could do aught to prevent gooseprickles from forming on her neck and arms then. He continued in a bare whisper, supplying the answer for her. "You thought I was _Jaqen_? And why, my girl, would you think _that_? Was he, perhaps, _expected_?"

How had she allowed it to come to this? Had her master not warned her against crossing the handsome man? She silently admonished herself for her own foolishness.

The Cat shook her head slightly in answer to his question, inadvertently causing the assassin's nose to nuzzle her. That shiver she could not suppress as she had not been prepared for it.

"No," she answered, her voice steadier than she would have believed possible, "he was not _expected._ I was…"

"You were…"

"I was _dreaming,_ " she lied, latching onto the deep blue of Gendry's eyes. "A boy I knew once… in Westeros."

"A boy? In Westeros? A boy who happens to be named _Jaqen_?" he prodded, recalling the name she had spoken as she shuddered under the touch of his lips; the name that had interrupted his… _attentions._

"No. A boy named… well, never mind his name, but in my dream, Jaqen was warning me against him. That's when _you_ showed up."

"Ah, I see. So it was all perfectly innocent." His smile informed her that he did not believe a word she had said. She struck back, hoping to distract him from his current accusing tack.

"No, it was _not_ all perfectly innocent. There was the part where a master snuck into my cell while I was sleeping and assaulted me in my bed. _That_ part was certainly less than innocent."

"Always so dramatic, little wolf," the handsome man complained, releasing her and walking backwards until he was leaning against the opposite wall. "As I recall, you were only _half_ asleep and you didn't seem to react negatively to my kisses until I _stopped_ them."

What he said was technically true, which made it all the more infuriating. The Cat merely rolled her eyes at him, though, before asking what it was he wanted of her today. The master chuckled.

"Sometimes, my girl, you make it far too easy."

Here, she finally did cross her arms over her chest, giving the assassin her most disdainful look. In return, he gave her an easy smile, one that looked genuine.

"Come, little wolf. Let's get back to the temple. You can give Umma your gift and in exchange, perhaps she'll find you some bread and cheese since you missed her breakfast. After that, I'll teach you a few counters to the moves I just used against you. Perhaps next time we meet in an alley, you won't embarrass yourself so thoroughly."

The girl frowned at the japing master, but, acknowledging that such instruction was sure to prove useful, she gathered her sack of shellfish and followed the handsome man back to the House of Black and White, feeling rather light-hearted after learning that Syrio was safe and seemed like to remain so.

* * *

_**Not With Haste—**_ Mumford and Sons (And I will love with urgency but not with haste)

**_Til Kingdom Come—_** Coldplay


	52. Chapter 52

Two days had passed; two _entire_ days without the Cat finding opportunity to speak with her master; her _Lorathi_ master, as she was coming to think of him. It was a subtle shift in her consciousness; a change in her identification of Jaqen ( _and_ the handsome man) that vaguely disturbed her. She had much else to spend her worry on just then, however, so she did not dwell on it, but the change was noted, and despaired marginally, and then tucked away for later dissection and study.

The girl's impatience to see the Lorathi, to _be_ with him and to be _held_ by him, was like a living thing, writhing through her veins and crawling just beneath the surface of her skin, leaving her in a state of constant disquiet. Her want of Jaqen, her _need_ for him, was becoming a source of endless distress. She hated herself just a little for it; for allowing herself to be governed by… _such soft emotion._

_Anger and hate, remember? Vengeance. Blood and steel!_ The apprentice admonished herself ferociously. She was not Sansa. She was not Lyanna _._ There was nothing so _delicate_ about her; nothing so _prim_ or _shrinking._ She could not allow herself to harbor weakness. She had no use for it. _Rage and revenge, not love._

_It cannot be dismissed so easily,_ her little voice warned. _It cannot be simply forgotten or ignored. Would you really want that, anyway?_

_Yes._

_Liar. You covet his touch so much that you can think of nothing else!_

Which, of course, was precisely her problem.

It was not merely the compulsion to seek physical contact that drove the girl's restlessness (though there was most definitely _that_ ), but also a desire for Jaqen's counsel; a craving for his wisdom. He knew her as no other did, and with all of the threats and intrigues that swirled around her, with all her unanswered questions and unresolved foreboding, the apprentice felt lost without the guidance of her master. It had been two long days in which her only interactions with Jaqen had been sporadic and fleeting.

Once, in the main temple chamber, his gaze slid smoothly over her as they passed one another while she served and his track from one point to another carried him into her orbit. Of course, the girl also glimpsed Jaqen across the table at meals, their eyes only flickering over each other intermittently, never holding one another's gaze for more than a second. Then, his arm brushed briefly against her shoulder as he left the training room while she entered. She was at her handsome master's side at the time and she wasn't sure if she merely _imagined_ the tight look that passed between the two Faceless assassins then, but to her it seemed that the level of tension surrounding the trio had increased to a nearly palpable level in that moment. Later, they had passed again in the long corridor but as she was still in the company of the handsome man, they had merely nodded to one another as they exchanged the expected courtesies quickly. She had felt Jaqen's one warm finger graze her wrist then and it was as if someone had taken a riding crop to her heart and set it to galloping at the slight contact. She had believed her appearance to be one of outward calm, giving the impression that she was unaffected, but there was, admittedly, a subtle intake of breath through fractionally parted lips. That, it seemed, was enough to draw the smirking master's attention. He snorted at her.

"Ridiculous," was all he said before guiding the acolyte through the stairwell door on their way to the small dining hall for the midday meal, his hand planted firmly in the small of her back. The Cat did not know what to say, so she remained silent, allowing herself to be shepherded, knowing that resistance would only invite further comment. She did not wish to discuss Jaqen just then; at least, not with _the handsome man_. The girl found herself wishing once again that her brother had not vanished. The Bear, at least, would have _understood._

That night, she lay in her bed directly after the supper hour, banished there by her ruthless new mentor with an ominous warning to rest _while she still could._ The handsome man had sent her away from table almost while she was still chewing her last bite, even though a lively conversation had erupted around the topic of dragons. She thought it was likely because he had caught her looking at Jaqen through her lashes, trying very hard to give the impression that she was staring at her bowl of fig pudding though she was really studying the Lorathi's exceptionally fine jawline while his face was turned away from her and toward the Kindly Man.

_"Off to bed with you, little wolf," the handsome man had commanded her dismissively, his usual smirk replaced with a frown. "You should rest while you still can."_

_Rest?_ Hardly. The tumult in her head kept peace from descending and she was frustrated with her inability to ignore her questions, her wants, her insecurities and uncertainties so that she could just sleep and dream pleasant dreams like any other girl of nearly six and ten. There was something unsettled in her (several somethings, truthfully) and she felt a hollowness in her core which made it impossible for her to rest. _Olive. The canal. Biro's children. Syrio. The Kindly Man. Mattine's face. Staaviros hanging. The Bear. The handsome man. Will's open throat and crumpled body._

_And Jaqen. Jaqen. Jaqen._

She groaned, trying to force a black curtain to descend over her thoughts, hiding them from herself so that she might rest. _Just this one night,_ she thought, closing her eyes and exhaling forcefully, willing her muscles to relax and her mind to be still. _Calm as still water._

_Perhaps if she said her prayer..._

"Ser Ilyn," she breathed into the darkness of her cell, "Ser Meryn. Queen Cersei. Traitorous black brothers. Valar Morghulis."

It was no use. Her mind remained stubbornly active, presenting her with a variety of subjects over which to brood; buffeting her with memories over which to agonize (and over which to _exult_ ).

_Jaqen._

_His mouth on hers, his hand on her cheek; her neck; her shoulder as his calloused thumb lingered over her scar. His nose brushing her chin and her jaw. His breath in her ear, carrying his whispered words; words that had the power to dictate the pace of her own heartbeat._

_Sure, think about all that,_ her little voice sneered. _It seems like a great way to get some rest. While you're at it, try remembering the details of how he's used his tongue. That should put you right to sleep._

_Shut up!_

The Cat blew out a long, heavy breath, turning over in her bed and yanking her blanket up to her chin. She clutched a bunched fistful of the woolen cover to her chest, pressing hard over her heart, trying to calm it, for it had begun racing as she thought back to Jaqen in the courtyard garden. And in the stairwell. And in her cell, sitting behind her in this very bed as she leaned back against him and...

The girl groaned again, squeezing her eyes shut tightly in an attempt to force the images from her mind, but it was futile, for the memories were now deeply embedded and were not dependent on her vision to fill them out and set them in motion. Her problem was that if she was able to stifle her thoughts of Jaqen, her mind immediately filled with her less-pleasant recollections. All of this conspired to destroy her peace and she could not sleep, no matter how she tried. She simply tossed in her bed, settling for no longer than a minute before she shifted again. She sighed.

The Cat decided that there was nothing for it but to see him.

_Well, that is very convenient,_ her little voice taunted, _since you wanted to see him anyway._

_Quiet!_

Even to think of it made her heart pound. There were a thousand reasons not to go to him. A _thousand_ thousand reasons. And only one reason she should.

But that reason seemed to trump all others.

What was it he had said when he came to her chamber two nights ago? Ah, yes.

_A man found that he had to see you._

_Had to._

She had to see him. _Had to. Otherwise, she would never be at peace. There was naught for it but for her to go to him._

But she _couldn't_. He was being careful, but not careful enough. And he was _completely_ unreasonable, refusing to consider his own safety, no matter how she implored. _The Kindly Man had forbidden it._ That alone was enough reason, never mind her half-hidden fear of what might happen to her own heart. Never mind her fear of the weakness she felt overtaking her; her inability to focus fully on her duty; her rising dissatisfaction with _everything_ that was not _Jaqen._ Her sleep was disturbed, at a time when her training under her handsome master had become more physically challenging and she had need of her rest. Her concentration faltered, at a time when the Kindly Man seemed to desire her company frequently and she had need of her wits to avoid the subtle traps he was known to set at times. Her appetite waned, at a time when it seemed everyone wanted to watch her eat. After the first few bites of any meal, she felt almost _ill_ and had to push her plate away, her belly a tangled mess of quaking nerves. The Kindly Man had threatened to call a healer ( _threatened_ was how she thought of it. He had merely mentioned that he noted she had not seemed to have much appetite and suggested a healer might be in order. She had assured him it was not necessary.)

Finally, she decided. She would go.

She threw her legs over the side of her bed and then stood. He was just one floor up. She walked to her door and hesitated.

_Are you mad?_ she asked herself. _The masters' corridor? You must be mad!_

She turned around and walked toward her bed. After two steps, she froze in place.

_She had to._

She spun on her heel, then, and walked back to the door, getting so far as opening it this time. The acolytes' passage was so quiet and still; it felt like a tomb. She had made it to the stairwell door when it occurred to her that she was wearing only her master's shirt over her small clothes. She frowned.

_He'll probably like that,_ her little voice commented.

_You really are mad if you think it's a good idea to traipse around the temple in a blouse and some underthings._

The Cat turned around and went back to her room, closing the door and throwing herself determinedly into her bed. Time drug on and Staaviros' purple face and bulging eyes floated before her, even when she pulled her pillow over her head. _He helped me,_ she thought. _He was kind to me, and his reward was a noose._ Then, Olive's eyes glittered at her there in the dark, dissolving into the Bear's despondent expression. She imagined her brother was in agony, _wherever he was_ , and her heart ached for him. She heard Biro's dying words, weak and gurgling as his own blood strangled him. _I have no children._ Then it was almost as if she could feel the slick scales of the large eels of the canal dragging against her bare thighs. The Cat sprang from her bed and rushed through her door and down the corridor without thinking, this time not running _to_ her master so much as running _from_ her waking nightmares.

Breathing heavily (as much from anxiety as from her exertion), she made it to the door which opened on Jaqen's floor, the stairwell just around the corner from the masters' corridor. The girl placed her palms flat against the smooth wooden planks but she did not push the door open, some sense of self-preservation finding its way to the surface and stopping her. She heard the Kindly Man's voice clearly in her head then, and it was as if he stood with her in the stairwell, speaking to her; reminding her of his wishes.

_I would prefer that you make no more late night visits to your master's chamber_.

The Cat leaned into the door, pressing her forehead against it and letting the temporary madness recede. The girl looked down at her feet and found them bare, as well as her legs. _Seven bloody Hells!_ she thought, shaking her head. She had been about to flee down the masters' corridor wearing only Jaqen's favorite blouse and enter her master's bedchamber in a bizarre reversal of the scene that had set the laundresses to gossiping about her and her alleged... _surrender of virtue._

"Not bloody likely," she whispered to herself, turning to descend the stairs and trudge back to her cell. She sighed heavily, the wild fluttering of her heart slowing to a normal pace as she came to the door that would lead to her own passageway.

"A man has known for some time of a girl's difficulty with the bindings and fastenings of clothing, but he did not believe it would lead her to forgo certain articles altogether," observed Jaqen, his accented voice floating up from the flight below her. The apprentice whirled to see her master ascending the stairs, her heart racing once again. The startling encounter and her own sprint up the stairs and then back down again had left her too breathless to reply. _Not that her muddled thoughts could have been shaped into a coherent response, anyway._

"Lovely girl," the Lorathi murmured as he reached the landing, "it seems you've forgotten your breeches."

The Cat stepped back to allow Jaqen passage, assuming he meant to continue up to his own floor. Her back met the door and she was grateful for the support, finding her knees a bit wobbly just then. When her master stopped in front of her rather than moving past and continuing up the stairs, she looked up and met his eyes.

" _What are you doing, Arya?_ " he whispered.

She gulped and shook her head slightly. What _was_ she doing?

He was so close. She had only to lean forward and she would fall into his arms. But she was frozen in her place. Finally, she spoke.

"Your fault," she said, her words more of a cracked whisper. "Again."

"What?" her master asked her in a bemused tone.

"The breeches," she clarified, after clearing her throat.

"Does a girl mean her _lack_ of breeches?" he wondered, quirking one corner of his mouth up, displaying that _damnable_ dimple.

"Yes. Yes! _Your_ fault."

"But, how unfair, lovely girl! A man would never deprive your of your clothes."

_A scandalous thought, questioning if that assertion were, in fact, true, crept into the forefront of his mind. He waved it away but his smirk grew slightly._

"I needed... I..."

The girl bit her lip, her eyes alternating between shadowed discs and burning orbs as she moved her head in the flickering torchlight which illuminated the stairwell. She appeared to be looking around him; past him, down the lower flight of steps and into the shadows there. Jaqen seemed to still for a moment, listening. Only silence greeted his ear. Silence, and a girl's shallow breathing.

"A man knows," he murmured, shushing her as he leaned forward, slipping his arms behind her and pulling her against himself.

He kissed the top of her head and she melted further into him, her body becoming a pliant thing, the shape changing and molding to allow her as much contact with her master as was attainable. Closer and closer she moved, eroding the tiny spaces that existed between them, pressing her hands fiercely into his back as if she could not get near enough. As he moved with her toward the door, pressing her back gently against the wood, she wound one bare leg around him instinctively, hooking him behind his knee, trapping him in place. When Jaqen felt his lovely girl's hip shift as she raised her thigh to allow this movement, his hand drifted to the smooth, cool skin of her bared limb. The girl felt her master's warm fingers gliding softly up her thigh, from her bent knee to the hem of the long blouse she wore.

The sensation was… _unexpected._

Her gasp was quiet, muffled as it was against Jaqen's chest. His fingertips grasped the edge of his _favorite shirt,_ more of a short dress on his lovely girl, and fiddled with the cloth. As he did, the girl felt as if there were cords attached to her and that hands other than her own were pulling those cords, directing her movements; guiding her this way and that; dragging her head back as she arched her chest forward into him, wrapping her one leg further around his and using it to urge him toward her; sliding her arms from his back and up his hard belly, then higher and higher, until her fingers finally discovered his collarbones, detectable through the soft material of his blouse. She explored and traced the landmarks as if trying to memorize their contour and their placement. The girl's upturned face invited Jaqen's kiss and so he gave it to her, bending to shape his lips to hers, a faint and abbreviated hum escaping his throat as he did. After a few seconds, he pulled his face back from her, gazing into the silver of her eyes as they fluttered open. She smiled at him then, feeling finally settled, if only for a moment, and turned her head, dropping her eyes shyly.

With only her profile presented to him, the Lorathi bent to kiss his lovely girl's temple, sweetly; softly. It had the effect of causing her ears to buzz and the puppet master who pulled her strings, a force she would later come to understand was the _instinct_ her master had declared she possessed in abundance (only applied in this _new_ way), drew her hand from the Lorathi's collarbones, up his neck almost _lazily_ and into his hair. Her slender fingers wove themselves around the scented strands, gripping him near his scalp, gently at first. As the assassin's lips trailed from the girl's temple to her jaw and on to her neck, he intermittently employed his tongue, the same one which the girl had only recently been considering. She stiffened and stilled, not even breathing. Her master started to withdraw from her, concerned she was reacting negatively to his pace, that she was _not ready_ , but her grip on his hair tightened, dragging his head forcefully back to her.

"No," she growled quietly, refusing to allow his retreat, and then she nipped hard at his throat, her teeth scraping the place where his three raking scars met the juncture of his neck and collarbone. He swore softly in Lorathi, feeling her smile against his skin. _A girl's Lorathi had improved,_ he recalled. _Greatly._ She had understood him. She had understood what it was he wanted to _do_ to her.

_And she had smiled about it._

Jaqen bent slightly at the knees, sliding his hands around and then behind her thighs, lifting her as he straightened. He pushed her back against the door somewhat harder than he had intended to, but she laughed quietly and wrapped her legs around his hips, her mouth meeting his in a kiss that was a frenzy of tugging and nipping and pressing, though she was careful not to hurt him this time. After a dizzying minute of this, she slowed and almost stopped, her breath hitching as she _considered._ Tentatively, she pushed her tongue forward, slowly sweeping the inside of her master's lower lip, hoping he would not accidentally bite her. He groaned softly and opened his mouth further for her, encouraging her exploration. The girl then brushed her tongue against her master's, and the sensation was so _foreign,_ so _strange,_ that she pulled her face away from him, giggling, the taste of ginger and cloves in her mouth, as if Jaqen did not merely smell of spice, but was actually _made_ of the stuff.

"You taste good," she told him in a breathless voice filled with both wonderment and appreciation. "Like Umma's spice cake."

"Now you know a man's secret," he replied with a grin. "A man has been pilfering the cook's spice cake from the kitchen since he was a small boy."

"Thievery? And in the _temple,_ Jaqen?" his apprentice admonished him, her look one of mock horror. "What would the Kindly Man say?"

"A man would be more concerned with Umma's reaction," the assassin replied. "She has always been the most frightening creature within these walls."

"Oh, no," the girl said, sounding serious. "No, Umma is not the most frightening creature here. _That_ distinction is _mine_."

"Yours?" the Lorathi returned in a teasingly dubious tone. "But you are just a lovely girl. Surely no one could ever be frightened of _you_."

The acolyte put one finger to her master's lips, shushing him as she said, "I am _not_ a lovely girl. I am a _wicked, wicked child_ , remember? I am a demon masquerading as a little girl; a dealer of death; the daughter of corpses; an _almost-_ Faceless assassin who feasts on the flesh of men. I am death on six legs, and my heart is _dark_. I am the Cat who comes and goes without notice, and the ghost in Harrenhal. I can read the minds of men and bend alley cats and eels to my will. You _should_ be frightened of me!"

The assassin smiled at his apprentice, kissing the finger she held to his lips and then nuzzled her cheek and her neck, whispering, "Yes, a girl is all of these things, and they are part of what makes her so lovely. A man has only ever been frightened of one thing, though, and _that_ thing, a girl has left off of her list."

"What is it, then?" she demanded, her voice changing from an assured tone to a gasping thing as he brushed his lips along the base of her throat, his warm breath raising gooseprickles from her sensitive skin.

Jaqen looked up to smirk at her.

"Does a girl really believe that a man will reveal his one weakness?"

"I _do_ ," she declared. "I _do_ believe it, because I am _terrifying_ and you cannot possibly hope to stand against me."

"It seems a man is the only one _standing_ at all," he snorted, returning his attention to her neck but running one hand across her thigh as if to emphasize that he supported both of their weights on his own two legs. The assassin's hand slid higher on the girl's thigh and brushed against the hard edge of her dagger. "Lovely girl..." he started.

" _Wicked child_ ," the Cat corrected him mischievously, trying to make her tone stern as she tilted her head to kiss the jawline she had been admiring surreptitiously at the supper table.

"Oh, just so," Jaqen murmured, his smile apparent in his voice. " _Most_ wicked. And why does a wicked child remember to wear a knife at her thigh when she cannot remember to wear her breeches to cover that same thigh?"

"Do you think after what has happened to me within the temple that I would ever walk these halls without my blade?"

"Just now, a man does not plan to let you walk these halls at all." With that, the Lorathi assassin hoisted the girl over his shoulder. She clamped her hands over her mouth to suppress her surprised squeal as her master carried her through the stairwell door, down the acolytes' passageway and into her cell.

* * *

The handsome man lay in his darkened bedchamber after attending a rather long council meeting in which the little wolf's trial had been discussed as well some intolerably tedious details about the acolytes' feast. He had trouble feigning interest in the planning of the feast, his only wish being that the cook serve something other than lamprey pie as the main course. _He had a thing about eels._ Still, the meeting hadn't been a complete waste of his time. He had now been given the timeline during which he must make the final preparations for the girl to earn her face. He would have to speak to the Lyseni boy, as well as to his own apprentice, and soon. It fell to him to arrange a critical part of the test. _Of course, that had all been explained after the meeting had adjourned, in a private discussion outside of the temple, lest his Lorathi brother catch wind of any objectionable details that might cause... dissension._

The master was staring at the dim stripe of moonlight that shone through his window and thinking on what he had been witness to over the last few days. He did not doubt the principal elder's assurance that the Lorathi assassin would not be allowed to pose a threat to the plan (for he had learned long ago never to doubt his master), but he remained vigilant anyway. He did not fend off Biro to protect the girl day after day only to return her to the temple and allow her to be _despoiled_ by his brother.

The girl's admiration of her Lorathi master was obvious, as was the affection (and growing _lust_ ) that lay just beneath the surface, evidenced by those little tell-tale signs she tried so _very_ hard to hide. _The tiny gasps; the pretty blushes; the way her wide, grey eyes sought him and lingered over him when she thought no one was looking._ His brother was more discreet, of course; more a master of his own responses, but the handsome man was not fooled; he had known Jaqen too long—known him before he _was_ Jaqen, or even a man grown.

They had been boys together, had trained and fought and lived together, sharing the same cell years ago that the Lyseni and Westerosi boys had shared until recently. They had shared _everything,_ including their master, and were more like brothers in truth than merely members of the same order. Many years ago, on a mission, the Lorathi had saved his brother's life. _Twice._ The handsome man had returned the favor the following year, his brother gratefully declaring them to be _even,_ but the handsome man had insisted he still owed one. _It made him smile to think about it now, but it also made him sad, and a little angry._ Both had been so suited to this life; both were beloved by Tyto (though, in truth, the handsome man knew Jaqen was always the swordsman's favorite); both had been absolutely dedicated to the ways of the order _and_ to each other.

_When had that changed? And why?_

_It had changed the way it had countless times before and would continue to until the world burned away in its final doom,_ he realized. _It had changed because of a woman._

_No, not even that. A_ girl.

They had parted as friends when the Lorathi sailed to Westeros nearly five years ago now. A year later, instead of his brother, it was the little wolf who pushed her way through the ebony and weirwood doors, seeking sanctuary among the assassins of the order. The principal elder's delight at the young orphan's arrival was well masked, but to one who knew him well, as the handsome man did, it was glaringly apparent. _Why?_ he recalled wondering. _What makes her so worthy of this inexplicable esteem?_

By and by, the handsome man had discovered that this fierce, grey-eyed creature was his brother's own recruit. _A recruit?_ It had been… _appalling. Then_ he chanced to learn that she was not just _any_ pitiable orphan, but a Westerosi nobleman's daughter; a Stark of Winterfell! _And worse, she had used an iron coin, his brother's own iron coin, to secure her passage across the Narrow Sea, ferried right to the doors of the House of Black and White._ He could not understand what his brother had been thinking, luring a highborn girl across the sea to join an assassins' guild; to serve a god foreign to her people. The handsome assassin had avoided the girl after his discovery. He wanted no part of his brother's heresy. What he could not understand, though, was why _his master_ tolerated it.

_But then, the Lorathi had always had a way of engendering the high regard of his betters. Not that the handsome man was jealous; no, he_ admired _his brother as much as anyone else did. But it flew in the face of reason that this violation of the creed would be forgiven. And not just forgiven, but seemingly embraced as joyously as anything had ever been within these walls. More than his completion of his own trials, in glorious fashion; more than_ any _of his successes had ever been celebrated._

And then, the Lorathi had returned, triumphant ( _of course, else why return at all?)_ It was perhaps half a year after the girl's own arrival, and his brother had swept in amid the well-wishes and congratulations that the handsome man had never seemed to inspire. Immediately, the Lorathi had plucked the girl from the hands of the masters who had trained her to that point (though her instruction had mostly been directed by the principal elder) and claimed her as his own. Again, behavior that had never been tolerated prior to this occurrence and something that now seemed to be accepted without question. Finally, his confusion and irritation too much for him to bear, he confronted _Jaqen,_ as he was now called (at least by the skinny wolf who trailed after him like his own shadow).

_"Have you ascended to the heavens now, brother, that you may choose whom to call to service?" the handsome man had asked, unable to hide the sarcasm in his tone._

_"Valar morghulis, brother," the Lorathi responded cautiously, cocking his head to the side as his thumb hooked itself over his sword belt, a posture as familiar to the handsome man as his own._

_"Well?"_

_"A man does not understand. What troubles you so?"_

_"Heresy, first and foremost. What_ happened _to you in Westeros?"_

_The Lorathi had just looked at his brother then, and there was something behind his eyes that the handsome man had never seen before, and did not understand. Later, he would recognize it as a sort of… spark of selfhood; a small pin placed through a part of the Lorathi that anchored one tiny piece of his brother to the earth; a piece that was no longer malleable but that was… constant; that was set; that simply…_ was. _It could not be shaped into the next identity required by a mission; it could not be dismissed as a disguise or discarded like a mask. It was_ him _, and he had bought it from a child,_ this _child; this grey girl who had bartered an identity for her ascendance into their order. His brother had given her his iron coin in exchange for a name._

_Jaqen H'ghar._

_"Your coin, brother?" the handsome man had asked him sadly then. The Lorathi remained silent and after a moment, his brother seemed to sag slightly, dropping his head. Jaqen could offer him no comfort; no explanation, and so he merely watched as his forlorn brother turned and walked away from him._

Now, though… _Jaqen_ might find he had need of that coin. He _might_ find it had been a mistake to sacrifice it. But then, there was a saying… A _Westerosi_ saying, appropriately enough. What was it?

_Oh, yes._

_Better to have loved and lost..._

* * *

"Nar 'amala," the assassin muttered as he entered the girl's cell, carrying her over his shoulder. The room was instantly bathed in flickering candlelight. Jaqen playfully threw his laughing apprentice on her bed and looked as if he were preparing to join her when she scolded him.

"Just make sure you take off your boots! The last time your smug brother relaxed in my bed with his boots on, I had to launder the sheets three days before I had intended!"

"When a man's brother did _what?_ "

"I told you that story," the girl said dismissively, crawling beneath her sheets to warm her bare legs.

"No," the assassin disagreed as he pulled his boots off, "a man believes he would have recalled such a detail."

"I'm sure of it... I told you that he kissed me in Mattine's cell," she reminded him.

"Yes, and that is _all_ you told a man. This... _interesting_ detail of boots was left out of the tale."

"Oh, well..."

"In fact," he interrupted, " _all_ the details were left out of a girl's account."

The girl colored, her face growing warm as she bit her lip. It was obvious that Jaqen expected her to give him a more complete version of what had occurred with _Owen_ under the wealthy man's roof.

" _Now,_ Arya," the Lorathi commanded, dropping onto her bed, rolling onto one side and propping his head up with his elbow, mirroring the Cat's own posture.

"I... well, the night I saw you in the courtyard, you remember, the night I came to speak to the Bear?"

He nodded and then looked at her meaningfully, trumpeting his impatience for her to continue.

"Well, when I arrived back at Biro's, the handsome man was waiting in my bed."

"A man has never found his brother to be so very _handsome_ ," Jaqen mumbled, but then asked, "What was he doing in your bed, lovely girl?" The Lorathi reached out and tucked a stray lock of the girl's dark hair behind her ear, trailing his fingers across her jaw as he waited for her answer.

"Mostly, he was knocking clods of dirt off his boots and into my sheets, I think," she replied dryly. Jaqen pursed his lips at her and she rolled her eyes, saying, "He was waiting for me, _obviously."_

"And what did he want from a girl?" her master prodded, ignoring her impudent tone (as he so often did).

"To _torture_ me. He chastised me for not meeting him to spar in the garden, as was our custom. He also seemed to want me to admit that I had seen you. He knew that the Kindly Man had told me that I was not to see you until after my trial."

"A man fails to understand how all this led to a kiss."

The Cat bit her lip again.

" _Well_ ," she began, drawing the word out, hesitating.

"Lovely girl," the assassin whispered, his words a warning. He was growing more irritable by the minute.

"I _might_ have... used a bit of... _hmmm..._ temptation?" she offered, and then added in a rush, "I was hoping to discover if he would reveal any more information about the canal plot."

Jaqen sat up, annoyed with her.

"A man recalls that he told his apprentice not to cross this _handsome man_." When he spoke, his voice was even, steady, but his quiet tone was at odds with the anger behind his bronze eyes just then.

"I know... I _know_ you did, but he was _there_. He surprised me in the dark, and he… _trapped_ me! I mean, he was there, asking about _you._ What would you have me do? I didn't set out to cross him. _He_ crossed _me."_

Jaqen was not appeased.

"What sort of temptation?" he demanded tersely.

The girl's throat felt very dry.

"What do you mean?" she rasped.

"A man means precisely what he said. _A girl should not test her master_."

The acolyte drew in a deep breath and looked down at her own hands as she spoke, explaining, "I just… well, I sort of… It's just really difficult to explain!" Here, the girl covered her face with her hands, burning with embarrassment.

" _Try harder."_

"I licked his earlobe. Honestly, that's the worst of it! I just… nuzzled his neck, just a little, and then I think I might have bitten his earlobe, and then licked it," she mumbled, ashamed, her eyes clenched tightly shut.

Jaqen was utterly silent. After what seemed like an eternity, he finally spoke.

"That _tongue_ of yours, lovely girl," he purred, "will one day get you into serious trouble."

She cracked one eye open and found him grinning at her. She narrowed her eyes and cried, "Ugh!" as she balled up her fist and punched his arm.

"But a man is confused," he continued as he rubbed his injured bicep, "a girl said that her handsome master kissed _her,_ yet now it seems as if a girl was molesting a man's brother with her wicked tongue!"

The Cat glared at her mentor before falling onto her back and crossing her arms over her chest.

"He _did_ kiss me," she insisted, " _after_ I licked him."

"When a girl puts it that way, a man feels he must forgive his brother his indiscretion. After all, he has seen firsthand how difficult it is to resist a lovely girl's…"

" _Don't talk about my tongue anymore,_ " she hissed.

The assassin moved over the girl, propping up on his elbows so as not to crush her slight frame under his weight.

"But it has newly become a man's favorite part of you," he whispered, his hair brushing the sides of her face and ears, tickling her and making it difficult for her to maintain her scowl. He dipped his face down then, and her scowl was lost completely, sacrificed at the altar of Jaqen's kiss. After a moment, the Lorathi drew back, kissing the tip of her nose lightly as he asked, "How many times has this handsome master kissed a lovely girl?"

"I already _told_ you," she replied, exasperated.

"A girl's count was not a certain thing. A man demands a number."

The Cat sighed, rolling her eyes, but seemed to be counting in her head and then answered, "Five, I think. Yes, I would say five times."

"Then a girl owes five."

" _What_?"

"Come, lovely girl, a man must have his due."

"Jaqen, what are you talking…"

Her words were cut off by Jaqen's mouth opening over hers, his lips moving to part her own and once her surprise abated, she moaned quietly against him. He lifted his mouth slightly then, and murmured, "One."

"This is a debt I will gladly pay," she sighed, one corner of her mouth lifting in a lopsided smile.

"A man is glad to hear it," the assassin said with amusement, wrapping her in his arms and rolling over with her so that she was laying on top of him then, twisted in her sheet. "A girl may begin fulfilling her obligations now."

His apprentice laughed lightly and then looked into his eyes for a moment, brushing his hair away from his forehead. Slowly, she moved to place her lips there, feeling the stubble on his chin brush against her neck.

"Two," she murmured, and then moved her lips to the spot behind his ear. After a moment, he felt her warm breath in his ear as she whispered, "Three." She attended to the hollow of his throat next, but loosened the ties of his blouse first, though it was not strictly necessary.

"Do not tax yourself, lovely girl," the Lorathi purred, "a man knows what difficulty these laces present for you."

She pulled rather harder at them then, giving her master a small growl before tugging at the skin above his breastbone gently with her teeth. Jaqen sucked his breath in then, and felt her tongue applied to the same spot shortly, drawing from him a hum as the girl said, "Four."

"A man does not complain," he began lazily, "but does that count as a kiss? It seemed more of… _a bite._ "

"You see? _This_ was precisely my difficulty earlier! What makes a kiss, exactly? When I was trying to count the kisses that…"

"Stop," her master commanded. "A man wishes to collect what is owed him before a girl invokes his brother's name again."

"Oh, very well," the girl indulged him, rolling her eyes. "A final peck on the cheek then?"

"If a man may make a request…" he started.

"No," she interrupted, her tone light. "A man may _not_."

Jaqen sighed in an exaggerated fashion, giving the impression of one who has been long-suffering and closed his eyes as he awaited the feel of Arya's lips on his cheek. He was surprised when she deftly pulled up the hem of his blouse and pressed her mouth against his belly, at first kissing and then nipping at the skin just above his navel before tracing its circumference with that _wicked tongue_ of hers.

For the second time that night, the assassin swore in his native tongue, only this time not quite so softly.

"Such language," the girl chided, sidling up to him and resting her head on his shoulder. " _Five._ The debt is paid. Say it."

" _The debt is paid_ ," he groaned. "Lovely girl, you cannot do that to a man!"

"I think I just proved that I _can_ ," she chuckled.

Jaqen turned his head to peer down at her and gave her _that_ look; that look he had _always_ given her, for as long as she could remember him giving her any look at all; that look that was the unmistakable mix of fondness and vexation; a look her father often wore when she had been drug before him by one of her older siblings, or her mother, or her septa, to answer for some small transgression or another.

_No,_ she thought when she studied the assassin's expression a bit closer. _No, that was not_ quite _how her father had looked at her. Ever._

"A girl _should not_ do that to a man, then," the assassin clarified, with emphasis.

His apprentice fabricated a look of confusion, suppressing a small smirk, saying, "But... if you didn't _like_ it, then why did you say that you were going to…"

Her master quickly pressed his hand over her mouth, unable to bear hearing what she had planned to say next, cursing the fact that she had mastered Lorathi quite so… _thoroughly._

"A man knows what he said," Jaqen growled. "He does not need to hear a wicked child repeat it."

"They are just _words_ ," she groused against his palm as he began removing it from her mouth. She stifled a yawn then.

"You are tired, lovely girl," he remarked. "A man will let you rest now."

"Will you stay? Until I fall asleep?"

"Of course," he assured her, kissing the top of her head and pulling her closer to him.

"May I ask you for something else?"

"Name it, lovely girl."

"Your shirt?"

"You already have a man's shirt. His _favorite_ shirt," he chuckled.

"I want the one you're wearing now."

Jaqen furrowed his brow, pulling back to look at her before asking, "Why?"

"Because it _smells_ like you, and this one doesn't anymore."

"Silly girl."

"I'm serious, Jaqen. Take off your shirt."

"A man did not forget to dress himself today. Just because a girl has forgotten half of her clothes, why should a man be deprived of his shirt?"

The Cat sat up, then, giving him a stern look that was not difficult to interpret.

"But a man will be _cold_ ," he whined playfully, tilting his head to look up at her with sad eyes.

"Worry is not for us," she rebuked, her tone mock-serious. He snorted. "I will keep you warm," she cajoled in a quiet, sing-song voice. He made no move to comply and so she crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.

"Yes, a girl is terribly frightening, the ghost in Harrenhal and all that," the assassin yawned. She pursed her lips and then began tugging his shirt off. When he did not cooperate, she straddled him and began working in earnest, finally rewarded with her prize as she tugged the garment over her master's head with a grin of triumph. He gave her a reproving look.

"You see? Now a man is cold. He will likely catch a chill, and it will be a lovely girl's fault. A man imagines the guilt will be overwhelming for you."

The girl shrugged, saying, "Well, you shouldn't smell so good, then."

Jaqen gave her a look of sadness and spoke in a false tone of disappointment as he shook his head at her, saying, "This is the treatment a man receives after he carries a barefoot girl all the way to her cell so that she would not have to place her feet on the cold stones of the floor? A girl has no honor!"

"I cannot quite recall... Is honor a strict requirement for becoming an assassin, or does the order remain flexible on that point?"

"Even assassins live by certain codes," her master said, "and a girl made a promise."

She quirked her eyebrow at him.

"You said it not five minutes ago, forgetful child!"

"Oooh, that," she breathed, quickly sliding over him and tucking her head under his chin so that she could warm him. "Better?"

"A man would prefer his shirt."

She snorted, lifting off of him as she said, "Fine, then!" In one swift movement, she had pulled his favorite blouse off and tossed it at his shocked face. Quickly, the girl slipped on the shirt she had only just extorted from him. She put her hands on her hips and gave her master a sullen look. "I trust you are happy now?"

"Very happy," he purred in agreement. "Now, a man has a blouse which smells like his lovely girl."

It was her turn to look shocked, and then she blushed sheepishly, sliding off of him so that she could curl up next to him instead. The pair lay together in silence for a while, enjoying a rare, peaceful interlude.

"Jaqen," the girl finally said, "where were you coming from?"

"Hmm?" the assassin hummed against her temple.

"When I met you in the stairwell, you were coming from the lower level."

"Ah. Yes, a man had been in a council meeting."

"A council meeting? So late?"

"Duties, lovely girl. They are not always convenient."

"Was it about… my trial?"

"We've barely been able to speak for days," her master said, repeating the words his apprentice had used with him in the armory a few mornings ago, "and when we finally have a few moments alone, a girl wants to use them to interrogate a man about the _secret agenda_ of a council meeting?"

" _Well_ …"

"A man cannot discuss this with you," he replied tiredly.

"No, of course not."

The room grew quiet again.

"But it was, wasn't it?" she whispered after a few minutes.

"Arya," the assassin growled.

"Alright! Never mind."

She shifted slightly, moving her face into the crook of his neck, gently kissing his scars before she sighed against him.

"Why can't it just always be like this?" the girl lamented quietly.

"Do you mean with a girl asking questions she should not be asking and a man scolding her? Perhaps a man is mistaken, but he believes it _is_ always like this."

"No," she snapped in the petulant manner particular to girls of nearly six and ten. "I mean… _oh, peaceful,_ I suppose."

" _Peaceful_ is what a girl wants most of all?" Jaqen asked her quietly. "A man wonders at your choice of vocation, then."

"Do you?" she retorted. "As I recall, you were the one who suggested it to me."

"Yes, but then, a man did not know a girl desired peace above all. A man recalls that then, a girl was much more interested in _revenge and steel_."

" _I still am,_ " the Cat assured him. "The peace… that's only for _us._ "

"Lovely girl, do you suppose you can parse your life into such neat segments, and that the one will not spill over into the other?"

She seemed to consider his words briefly, biting her bottom lip for a few moments, but then turned over, pressing her back into his chest.

"Oh, I don't know," she moaned, dragging her hands down her face tiredly. "I don't know! Why are you asking me this?"

"Only to help you understand," Jaqen murmured. "You are _so young,_ and…"

It was the girl's turn to curse, her irritated utterance interrupting whatever it was that her master was about to say. She sat up and threw her legs over the edge of her bed, standing after a moment and then pacing to and fro across the cell in agitation.

"I'm _young_? _I'm_ young? And _that_ means that I am… too _stupid_ to understand the dangers of this life I've chosen? This life that _you_ chose _for_ me? Do you think that _I_ don't understand the dangers inherent in my choices? That _I'm_ the one who needs protecting?"

"Lovely girl… Arya… a man did not mean…"

"No, Jaqen. Stop," the girl said forcefully, halting her movements to pinch the bridge of her nose as she squinted her eyes shut in frustration. Opening them, she bore into her master with her stormy stare. "What are you _doing_ here, Jaqen?"

"Why are you so angry, lo…"

" _What are you doing here?"_

He did not answer but merely sat on the edge of her bed, facing her, absorbing her anger, trying to understand the sudden, fiery change in her mood.

" _Who do you think your Kindly Man is?"_ she mocked. " _Do you think he will tolerate your disobedience?"_

"Your memory is... impressive, sweet girl."

" _I remember everything you have ever told me_ ," she spat, pacing again. "You told me he does not forgive rebellion, do you remember that?"

"Arya…" the assassin began hoarsely. The girl held up her hand, stopping him before he could say more.

"Jaqen, I…" she sighed heavily, slipping her fingers into her own hair and tugging at the roots as she shook her head. "I _love_ you. I _long_ for you, constantly; _ridiculously;_ incessantly. I would endeavor to be with you _every waking moment_ if I could, and even the _non-waking_ ones, so it's not that I am trying to _blame_ you for being here. _I want you here_. But do you not see how insulting it is that you treat me as if I am a child? As if I twirl and daydream and sing my way through life, not seeing the dangers; not understanding the risks? _Me_. _I saw my father beheaded when I was one and ten._ Before that, I _killed_ for the first time. And you _know_ what my life was like after that; all that I saw; all that I _did._ "

"None of that was your fault, sweet girl," the assassin said quietly, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands.

" _I don't need your absolution!_ " she laughed, the sound a bit wild, as if one push could send her over the edge into hysterics. "I'm not sorry for anything I did! This isn't _guilt_ , this is... _experience._ Seven Hells, I _saved your life!"_

"And a man paid that debt, both to the Red god, and to you."

"No, I know. I don't mean to... I am not trying to wheedle a favor. I only want what I am owed."

"What does a girl believe she is owed, then?" the Lorathi implored, looking up at her from his perch.

" _Respect,_ " she answered him firmly. "That's all I want. You cannot... you should not think... Jaqen, I'm not _too young._ I'm not!"

Her master stood then, crossing the small distance that separated them and wrapping her in his embrace.

"Shhh," he soothed. "No, a girl is not too young. She is… she is a man's _reason."_

"A man's reason?" the girl murmured into his chest. "His reason for _what_?"

Jaqen drew her in closer, placing his lips by her ear as he whispered, "For _everything_."

His words stole hers and she could think of nothing to say which she considered a weighty enough reply to _that._ The girl's mind then drifted back to what had upset her initially.

"Jaqen, I hope… I _hope_ you don't think that because I… _love_ you, and you are… always in my thoughts… I hope you don't think that means I am somehow less… _capable._ If _you_ found me…" here, she swallowed hard, "silly or stupid or if you thought I was some vapid, preening, sentimental _lady_ , I'd…"

"A man did not mean…" he began apologetically.

"No, I know," she said, her voice softening. "I know you didn't. But you need to see that you… _you_ are risking _much,_ just by being here right now, and you don't seem to see it. You chastise _me_ for my… _recklessness,_ and you speak to me as if… as if I am _oblivious_ to the dangers that surround us, and yet you do not see your _own_ impulsivity and carelessness!"

Jaqen swept the girl up then, alarmed at how light she felt, how thin, but not wishing to raise her ire further by scolding her about her diet when she had only just calmed herself. He carried her to her bed and sat down, cradling her in his lap, craving the contact, and wishing to settle her mind. He could have told her what he _knew;_ or, at least what it was he _suspected;_ that there was a plan and she had a central role; that this role was so important, it rendered all the elder's threats empty, toothless things. But he did not wish to add to his apprentice's anxieties. Whatever comfort she might take at his words would surely be swallowed by the doubt and worry she would feel at knowing there was some greater force at work, and it had a plan for her, and she did not know what that plan was. And so, he did not speak of it; did not _warn_ her when he might have; _while he still had the chance._

"Lovely girl, do you trust a man?"

"It's not about that," she insisted.

"Arya, do you trust a man?" he asked again, pulling her chin up and holding her face steady so that she looked him in the eye.

"You know I do."

"And when has a man failed to protect you?" the assassin demanded.

"You have always protected me," she acquiesced, then, thinking of the eels of the canal, added softly, "when you could. But I was a girl of one and ten then. And then two and ten, and three and ten. But that is no longer the case."

"You are still a man's apprentice," he told her firmly. "Until you have said your vows, your safety is a man's primary concern."

"But it's different now, Jaqen," the girl insisted. "Now that I've killed Biro... now that they are ready to let me undergo my trial... The order no longer sees me as a child, no matter how you may view me."

Jaqen laughed softly then, shaking his head and burying his face in her neck, placing a slow succession of gentle kisses on the white flesh there.

"You mistake a man, lovely girl. He does not see you as a _child._ Not anymore," he murmured into her neck, his voice becoming hoarse.

"Then stop treating me as one," she replied, her hands finding his face, urging him closer to her, "because I'd rather spend my time letting you do this to me than arguing with you."

"A girl is very, very wise."

"Don't forget _wicked,_ " she whispered as she began nipping at his earlobe.

"Just so," he breathed.

* * *

_**Trouble—**_ Ray LaMontagne

_**Wicked Game—**_ Chris Isaak

_**Sober—**_ Tool (HM)

_**Disarm—**_ Smashing Pumpkins (The killer in me is the killer in you)

_**Quelqu'un m'a**_ _**dit**_ _—_ Carla Bruni

_**The Scientist—**_ Coldplay


	53. Chapter 53

_And I hold you with such delicacy..._

* * *

The girl lay curled against her master, her front pressed to Jaqen's side, she under the sheet and thin blanket and he atop them. Her head was resting on his arm and she closed her eyes, inviting sleep to come. He had agreed to stay with her until she fell asleep and she felt an inordinate amount of gratitude for the promise. Lying there, next to him, feeling his warmth seeping through both the blanket and her ( _his)_ blouse as it bled into her skin filled the girl with a pervasive sense of calm that she hadn't experienced since... _ever._ She felt a peace settle over her as she breathed in her master's scent, though her little voice tried to tell her she had no reason to be at ease then.

 _You are purposefully chasing trouble,_ she heard faintly from somewhere inside the back of her head, though she tried very hard to ignore the voice. _Do not become so sick with love that you abandon all caution._

 _Leave me alone,_ she thought fiercely at it, _and let me have this one thing. It's only a few stolen moments._

 _Ignoring the truth does not make it any less true,_ her little voice reasoned and the girl thought of the Kindly Man and all he had said to her regarding her master. Suddenly, her peace was gone and she shifted, turning away from Jaqen but still keeping her head on his arm. She could feel the heat of his limb against her cool cheek and it was so pleasant and soothing that she loathed the idea of breaking the contact.

"A girl will never get to sleep if she keeps squirming in her bed," the Lorathi murmured, turning his face to place a kiss against the back of her head.

"I know," was all she said, but her voice carried a hint of some deeper sadness or distress. Hearing that from her, here, _now_ , pained him. He wished so much for her to have some happiness; to be lighthearted and carefree, if only for a moment.

 _She is too burdened for one so young,_ he thought.

Jaqen reached down and grasped the end of her messy braid, the plait held together by a leather tie. He pulled the hair up lazily, studying its rich color in the dim candlelight for a moment and then, with a small smile on his face, used the bound end of her hair to tickle her ear. She swatted at it and he stopped, only to brush against the ear again once she had tucked her hands in the small space between her neck and the mattress.

"Stop!" she commanded, sounding vexed as she swatted at his hand again and then scratched at the lingering tickle. "That's just as likely to keep me awake as my squirming!"

"Well, there is one sure way to make a man stop," he told her, brushing lightly at her ear once again with the hair, his tone hinting at his mirth.

"Slit his throat?" the girl guessed, _her tone_ hinting at her irritation.

"Hmm... _two_ sure ways, then."

She turned over to face him with a huff and glared at him for a minute before saying, "Well, what do you suggest, then?"

"You must otherwise occupy him," her master told her in a matter-of-fact way.

"Oh, the time-honored distraction technique?"

"Just so," he agreed, smiling slightly. "The ability to distract is a very useful skill for a Faceless assassin to master."

"So... you're claiming this is a _lesson_?" she asked, her tone skeptical.

Jaqen's smile broadened and he purred, "If a girl would only allow him, there is much a man might teach her."

"Oh, I've no doubt of _that_ ," she told him wryly. "And perhaps there are things a girl might teach a man as well."

"Oh?" he asked, sounding both surprised and interested. The girl made a quick movement and her master felt the press of sharp steel against his neck, warm from where the blade had been resting against her thigh.

"It's an old lesson," she whispered, "but one that bears repeating. _Mind your head, lest you lose it_."

"Ah," Jaqen said. "A girl remembers the lesson a man taught her after he returned from Westeros."

"I remember everything you've taught me," she assured him, moving her blade slightly for emphasis. "Though I am not so sure that _you_ do. If I were an assassin sent here to kill you, you would be dead right now." She inclined her head toward his and brushed her lips along his jaw as she whispered, " _Dead man._ "

"Then it is a very good thing that you are a lovely girl and not an assassin sent to kill a man," he murmured fondly, moving slowly to kiss her forehead and her nose, pushing the blade away from his neck. "But a girl cheats."

"Cheat? I did not!" she cried, affronted. "Besides, assassins aren't bound by any notions of fairness."

"That sounds like a man's _handsome brother_ talking," her master said, his voice holding a note of disdain. "Nonetheless, a girl cheats."

"How so?"

"You used a man's longing against him. Even if a girl's hand is used only to threaten, a man is loath to stop his lovely girl from touching him. _He has grown quite fond of the feel of his lovely girl._ To be without it is... _wholly disagreeable._ "

 _Could have stopped, but did not,_ the girl heard, chagrined. Then she thought of how fond _she_ had grown of the feel of her master. She blushed a little, chewing on her lower lip.

"Ah, there is a man's suckling pig," he teased. "It is so hard to decide which is more lovely, Arya Stark's neck and cheek blushing this pretty pink or remaining snowy white. Both are quite irresistible to a man."

She snorted in disbelief, rolling her eyes at what she perceived as his overstatement.

"That part was no jape, lovely girl. A man finds you to be so very, very beautiful," the Lorathi told her, his eyes softening for a moment before they took on a decidedly _mischievous_ twinkle. "Now, let a man show you which sort of distraction he _actually_ had in mind..."

* * *

After a time, the girl had finally settled into peaceful slumber and her master slid gracefully from her bed and stood over her for a moment, watching her chest rise and fall with her slow, even breathing. The unusually placid expression Arya wore only in sleep pulled at a place inside of Jaqen's chest that seemed dangerously near to his heart. As he gazed at her, the Lorathi thought to himself that there was likely no measure he would not take to keep her safe; nothing he would refuse to do to protect her; no action too onerous or distasteful if it meant that he could keep her out of the reach of the world's cruelties. Arya had experienced more than her share of the extreme savagery of which men were capable. She deserved respite. He was determined that she would find it.

It was perhaps this frame of mind that led him to agree so quickly to what the Kindly Man would ask of him later.

The Lorathi assassin reached out and gently stroked his apprentice's hair one last time before striding to her door and muttering, "Aqtam 'amala." Her candle was instantly snuffed, leaving the girl in complete darkness as her master stepped into the acolytes' corridor and pulled her door closed behind him.

It was sometime after Jaqen had finally torn himself away from his lovely girl (from the cool press of her palm resting against his neck and the small shape of her sleeping form beneath her covers) and returned to his own bedchamber that the girl's unconscious mind drifted back to her recurring dream of Winterfell. She was again in her cumbersome gown, a masterpiece wrought in grey and silver, metallic threads and studded gems glittering and winking amid the ensconced wall torches and scattered candles. Though the Great Hall was filled nearly to bursting with faceless, laughing guests, the girl found herself somehow isolated from them all, crowded into a secluded corner by the arrogant, up jumped sellsword who had claimed a dance and caused her to become dizzy and breathless before kissing her fingers.

She had threatened him and he had laughed, demonstrating how little he thought of the danger she posed. _Let him underestimate me,_ she thought. _He does so at his own peril._ Her face was nearly expressionless as she regarded the rogue quietly for a moment, and then she turned to leave him. Arya had taken only a single step when she felt his hand on her shoulder, holding her back. His palm lightly grazed the fair skin laid bare by the cut and drape of her gown, his thumb finding her old, well-healed scar and caressing it gently. The touch, _that_ touch, _there,_ stirred something deep within her and her ire sparked back to life as the girl whipped around to face the man who had inspired her anger.

"You are too familiar, _ser_ ," she said icily. "My _brother_ will have something to say about it."

"You disappoint me, my lady," the Tyroshi said in a bored voice that displayed no hint of concern for whatever it was her brother might have to say. He reached for her again and his thumb resumed lazily tracing the small imperfection which faintly marred the pale flesh of the girl's shoulder. "After seeing you in the training yard, I had thought you more than capable of fighting your _own_ battles. Are you now resolved to petition for the aid of your brother? Do you find me so threatening?" The man then tilted his head and regarded her with obvious amusement for a moment before he helpfully added, "Oh, and the proper term, my lady, is _captain,_ not _ser._ "

"You may find that you _prefer_ my brother's judgment to my own, _captain_ ," she spat, "for he is far less-likely to _geld_ you. Oh, and the proper term, captain, is _your grace_ , not _my lady._ "

Grinning salaciously, the Tyroshi captain stepped even closer to Arya; _uncomfortably close._ His blue eyes bore into the silver-grey of her own as he said in a low, gravelly voice filled with illicit suggestion, "If you would have me commit treason here, in the presence of the dragons and all those who support their claim, I can think of better ways for you to convince me than threatening to geld me."

 _Quick as a snake_ , the girl's left hand shot out for the Tyroshi's weapon, the Myrish stiletto that always graced his right hip. As she unsheathed the slender blade, she relished its familiar heft in her hand and thought that had it not been for that garish, golden hilt, it could have almost been Needle's twin. Before she could satisfactorily employ the wickedly sharp sword, however, the man had swept her bodily against him and then spun them both as if they were dancing together once again. He swiftly walked her backwards into the corner nearest them, her back grinding into the stone of the wall behind her, preventing her retreat and isolating her further from the revelers in the room. Perhaps she only imagined the soft sigh that seemed to escape him then, but she had no time to wonder at it before he was pinning her in place with his body and mercilessly digging into a tender spot on her wrist with his thumb; a spot that she herself had been taught to target a lifetime ago. The steel dropped from her hand but he caught it before it could strike the ground.

"I'm surprised, _your grace_ ," the man murmured, insolently daring to taunt her. "I had thought your fangs sharper than that. _Or was it your claws_?"

Breathless and grabbing at her wrist in pain, the girl looked up at his smug expression, overcome for a moment with the embarrassing desire to rake at his bronze face with her fingernails; _wishing to scratch at him like a weak woman who did not know how to wield a real weapon._

_Or, to claw him as a cat would, marking the skin of a stronger foe._

"I have neither fangs nor claws, _captain,_ only steel _,_ " the girl hissed, "and I was not allowed to bring it to the feast, unlike _some_."

"I believe I told you that you'd have to kill me before you could claim my blades, _your grace_. Besides, I had a different nameday gift in mind for you." With that, the Tyroshi captain wrapped the stunned girl in a tight embrace, pinning her arms uselessly against her sides as he hungrily kissed her mouth. Her startled protests were pushed back down her throat by his tongue and for a fleeting moment, she thought she could taste… _something._ A feeling tickled at the edges of her memory and for half a second, she found she was relaxing into the sellsword captain's arms but then her eyes grew wide and she gathered her wits, biting her assailant's lip, applying yet another lesson from another lifetime. He gave a quick, guttural growl and jerked his head back. She could see the fresh wound there on his lower lip, a slow trickle of blood oozing from it.

Grinning, the sellsword licked at the wound and the gesture somehow caused her heart to thud. His grip loosened a bit and the girl used all her strength to push him away from her.

"Touch me again, and I will kill you, _captain,_ " she promised in a quiet voice, rooting him in place with her grey eyes that raged like a tempest. The way her voice curled around his title made it sound more like an insult than an honorific.

Dropping one thumb to his sword belt as the other rubbed roughly over his wounded lip, one corner of his mouth curled upwards as he replied, "I believe it may be worth the risk, _your grace._ "

His words had the sound of a promise and they were spoken into the lull between songs. Before the girl could reply to the Tyroshi, she heard the music start again and then swell around her. A high, clear voice began singing, accompanied by the sound of a harp. The song was so sweet, so mournful, that she felt a tear form in her eye, and then tumble slowly down her pale cheek. It felt like ice against her skin. Her vision became blurry with unshed tears then, but through the watery haze, she thought she could just make out... Was that... _No, it couldn't..._

 _Her father._ He was weaving through the crowd, moving among the guests with a graceful rapidity, wearing his rich, grey cloak trimmed with a fox fur that was as familiar to her as Needle. _Her father was here, and he was moving to the rear of the hall. If she hurried, she could catch him._

The girl drew up very straight then, and side-stepped the Tyroshi without a word, passing like a shadow along the edge of the festivities as she made her way to the rear exit of the Great Hall; the one that would take her into the antechamber where her father seemed to be headed. She passed the dark, towering knight who served as her sworn shield; the knight who had been hastily making his way to the secluded corner from which she had just escaped, once he realized his queen seemed to be _detained_ there, and not willingly. He had not seen the _kiss_ , but he had seen enough to cause his normally stoic expression to arrange itself into an utterly frightening scowl. As she stalked past him, he called softly to her, not wishing to draw the attention of the revelers.

_She hated to be the center of attention. He knew it. The castellan knew it. The whole of Winterfell knew it. It was a wonder that Jon had insisted on this feast._

"Your grace," he said as she maneuvered around the obstacle he presented. The silver and grey clad lady did not meet his eyes but she lightly trailed her fingers along the small of his back as she slipped around him, acknowledging that she had heard him but indicating that she did not wish to speak here. He turned to follow her, dropping his hand to his sword hilt and giving a menacing look to the Tyroshi over his shoulder one last time. _She did not appear to be in a good temper and that arrogant, foreign man-whore was certainly to blame. Perhaps the captain of the Stormcrows had thought to add Arya to the collection of queens he had bedded, but if so, he did not know the little ice-wolf very well._

"Your grace," the knight called again when the doors had closed behind them, separating them from the laughing and the drinking and the undulating waves of music. She was striding through the rear antechamber, heedless of his address, heading for the doors on the other side which opened into the long gallery. The gallery had an outlet near the Great Keep at its other end. "Arya!"

That finally attracted her attention. She drew up short, clutching at her throat briefly before she spun on her heel, walking quickly back to him. When she placed her hands on his mailed chest, he could feel her tension radiating off of her like the rolling heat from a forge.

"I have need of your hammer," she told him urgently, her voice low and insistent. Her eyes were wide and almost wild and her face was paler than usual. The knight could see the streaked trail caused by a single tear on her cheek and cursed the captain of the Stormcrows silently, blaming the Tyroshi for _whatever_ this was. He slipped his hands over hers, staying her for a moment, trying to understand her agitation.

"What is it?" he whispered, ignoring the way the pressure from her palms against his chest caused his heart to contract painfully. He had grown accustomed to the feeling. "Where are you going? Why do you need my hammer?"

"The crypts," she gasped, as if she were finally unraveling a long-unsolved mystery. He misliked how bloodless her face had become. " _The crypts_. He must have gone... I must find him!"

There was a certainty in her voice, a surety that was unmistakable but that he did not remotely understand. _Why did she want to go to the crypts? And what good would his war hammer do against those who were long dead? Who did she need to find?_

The sound of a door opening drew her attention as well as his. He turned protectively, shuffling her halfway behind him, looking to see who intruded on them just then. The towering knight was surprised to find that several people were filtering out of the great hall and entering the antechamber.

"Little sister," Jon began, his voice clouded with worry. "I saw you leave. Are you well?" The girl made him no answer, just stared at him from behind the dark knight's arm. Her strange expression seemed to unsettle her brother and so he looked to her sworn shield instead. "Ser Gendry, is she ill?"

The massive knight looked helplessly at his castellan, unable to answer honestly. Catching sight of the smirking captain just past Jon's shoulder, he glared.

"I think you should ask this Tyroshi sellsword what troubles the queen," her sworn shield ground out. Gendry's hands itched with his desire to beat the arrogance out of the man.

Jon turned to note that the dragon queen's loyal captain (and rumored lover) was indeed standing behind him, flanked by the last surviving Targaryens, the dragon queen herself as well as her nephew, the lately-styled _king of the Seven Kingdoms._ The two dragons looked so alike they seemed more like a twin brother and sister rather than an aunt and nephew. A dark-skinned man, marked by both his bearing and his dress as _Unsullied_ , was standing stalwartly behind the silver queen. Only a moment later, an older man with the appearance of a Westerosi nobleman emerged from the Great Hall and placed the one hand left to him on the silver king's shoulder. Gendry's grip tightened on his sword hilt and he noted that the Unsullied captain grasped the leather-wrapped hilt of his arakh then, but neither made a move to raise their weapon.

"Captain?" Jon Snow asked, turning to the Tyroshi with a look of confusion marring his Northern features. "What does Ser Gendry mean?"

Before the man could answer, they heard the words of the queen in the North.

"There is no time for this!" the ice-wolf declared vehemently, her voice edged with something that neither her sworn protector nor her brother could quite interpret. Excitement? Rage? Fear? When she spoke again, her voice was caught between pleading and commanding. "Gendry, your hammer!"

With that, the girl spun around and then fairly ran, bursting through the doors to the gallery. Her long, glittering skirts trailing behind her with the barely audible whisper of silk gliding over stone, the queen in the North left the most distinguished of the guests at her nameday feast flabbergasted in her wake. Knowing that the doors at the other end of the gallery would let Arya out into the cold night and the snow drifts that had accumulated between the gallery and the Great Keep, Gendry cursed under his breath. He then gave a quick bow to the royal retinue (and a dark look to both the Unsullied and Tyroshi captains) and without further ceremony, he turned and followed his queen at speed.

* * *

The handsome man had lit the girl's candle in the conventional way, never having spent much time in Asshai, and then waited to see if the sudden brightness of the cell would pull her from her dreams. When it did not, he moved to shake her awake but was stopped by the sound of her voice, mumbling something. It sounded as if she had said _hammer._ She quickly settled and was quiet after that, so the Faceless master sat on the edge of her bed and to watch her and see if she would speak further. After a while, he gave up and shook the acolyte gently by her shoulders.

"Good morning, little wolf," the assassin cooed.

Unlike the last time he had attempted to rouse her from her slumber, the girl gasped almost violently and bolted upright in her bed, rasping, "The crypts!" The handsome man laughed a bit at the odd statement and the girl looked at him most strangely, as if trying to place his face. After several hard blinks, her confusion melted away and she demanded to know what he was doing in her cell, though the surly effect of her tone was somewhat stifled by a yawn that interrupted her words halfway through.

"Waking you up for your training, my girl. Don't you know your time is short? You need all the lessons you can stuff into what time is left to you."

The way he said it sounded rather ominous to the girl's ear, but she brushed it off, for she never knew quite how seriously to take her handsome master's words. She slumped back down and moaned, asking him if she really had to be up just then.

"Most certainly," he said, grabbing her blanket and sheet and whipping them off of her. "As early as I sent you to bed last night, you should be well-rested, anyway."

"Hey!" she cried, yanking the hem of her Lorathi master's dove-grey blouse down over her bare thighs and trying to draw her legs up under the billowy shirt.

The handsome man cocked his head to the side and peered at her with an inscrutable expression. His stare lasted so long, she became uncomfortable and felt herself turning hot and pink, though she did not understand _why._

" _What are you staring at?_ " she hissed finally.

"I was just picturing the last time I saw that blouse," he answered slowly. "I'm almost certain it was on my brother's back, during a council meeting, _last night_."

The Cat's heart thudded dully in her chest and she commanded herself to rule her face. As she appeared to calmly return the assassin's gaze, her mind was a chaotic jumble of responses and she desperately tried to latch onto the one that would make the most sense yet not reveal that she had spent the better part of her night in Jaqen's arms.

"I've _been_ wearing Jaqen's blouse," the girl pointed out, her remark sounding casual and unconcerned.

"Indeed. But not _that particular one_ ," the handsome man replied, sounding certain.

"Perhaps they got mixed up in the laundry?" she offered.

"Perhaps you got mixed up in the Lorathi?" he countered.

The Cat willed her blush to die but was not sure the undertaking was completely successful. In an effort to distract him from the fact that she had once again disobeyed an instruction, she japed with him about being jealous.

"Would you rather that I was wearing _your_ blouse?" the apprentice laughed halfheartedly. "Do you wish to trade breeches, too?" She lifted her eyes to the master's face and thought she might see mockery or derision or anger. Instead, she saw... _concern_?

"This is no joking thing, little wolf," the handsome man told her seriously as he gripped her shoulders. "I know you have only been under this roof for a short time compared to the rest of us, but surely you know that you cannot... you _should not_ cross the principal elder?"

"My master told me the same about you, once," she whispered, stunned by the similarity between the two warnings. The acolytes grey eyes were wide as she gazed intently at the assassin's face. "I didn't listen then, either."

The assassin smirked at her, but his typical mirth was absent and the gesture felt empty as he said, "He wastes his worry on me. I am no threat to you. But the principal elder is a different matter."

"Why, though? Why does he want me to stay away from Jaqen?"

"What do you believe the reason to be?"

"You _always_ answer my questions with questions!" the Cat complained, pulling free of his hands. "Are you simply incapable of giving me answers?"

"You _always_ whine when you don't get your way. Are you simply incapable of figuring things out for yourself?" the master retorted, rising from her bed and crossing his arms over his chest as he looked down at her.

The girl sighed and slumped back against her headboard, feeling deflated. She took on a decidedly pouty expression and it served to remind the handsome man that she was not yet six and ten. Her trial approached rapidly and yet she was still so strong-willed _._

"The unmitigated _arrogance_ ," he seethed quietly before raising his voice to address the acolyte. "Who are you, little wolf, that you are so entitled to the satisfaction of your every whim? Who are you to think you are entitled to your _answers_?"

"Who are _you_ to deny them to me?" she shot back, her look defiant and her mouth drawn down into a frown.

"Me? Why, I'm no one, my girl. _No one at all_."

* * *

Jaqen had broken his fast early, ducking into the kitchen and pilfering some crusty bread. The cook was there working and she gave him a suspicious look. _Despite his lovely girl's protestations, the cook really was the most frightening creature within these walls,_ he thought, inclining his head respectfully to the woman as he turned to leave.

"You'll not hurt her," he heard her say in Braavosi, her voice rising quietly from behind him. Her words arrested his stride and he stopped and looked back at Umma over his shoulder. Her face was placid, but her mild expression reminded him somewhat of his master; there was more to the look than what met the eye at first glance, perhaps even a threat. He wanted to smile at her, even kiss her cheek for caring so much about his apprentice.

"No, Umma," the Lorathi assured her, "that is not a man's intention."

"Humph," the woman muttered, going back to her kneading. "Some of the vilest evils of this world arose from someone's _good intentions_." She was not looking at him as she spoke but the words were no less impactful. The assassin rotated fully then and approached the cook, gently laying one of his brown hands on her floured knuckles. Umma's kneading ceased and she looked up sternly at Jaqen.

"Umma, a man will not hurt her," he promised, filled with tenderness at the sight of this woman behaving as a surrogate mother to his lovely girl, just as she once had for a little, orphaned Lorathi boy.

The cook nodded curtly, but added, "Others might."

"A man means to prevent that," he stated simply. "A man means to make it his _mission_ to prevent that."

"Your mission is to serve the will of Him of Many Faces," Umma reminded him, walking away from him and rifling through a tin box on the corner of the counter. She returned to him with a small, cloth-wrapped package and pressed it into his hands.

"A man does not see why he cannot do both," the master assassin replied as he accepted her gift.

"Can you really not see, my boy?" Umma asked him sadly, her typical gruffness all but gone.

He smiled at her fondly and then bent to kiss the woman's cheek. She looked up at him in surprise.

"It has been many years since you've done that," she said, placing her dusted palm over the place his lips had touched. Jaqen gazed at the woman for a moment and then turned to leave once again, unwrapping the small package Umma had given him as he left the kitchen. His smile broadened at the chunk of spice cake sitting in the cloth and he took a bite. As he chewed, he allowed the flavor to carry him back briefly to a time when he was a young acolyte and Umma showed her motherly concern for _his_ sake. He found himself wondering if she had ever spoken to his master about her worries for him long ago, but then he thought that these circumstances were rather different. After all, in those bygone days, the principal elder had not fallen in love with his apprentice and his master had certainly never felt his loyalties tearing him in two.

 _Love or duty,_ Jaqen thought, knowing that the time approached when he must finally decide between them, _for it cannot be both, it seems_.

_How much longer until his choice became apparent to those around him? And what consequences when it did?_

* * *

When the ebony and weirwood doors pushed open not a half hour past the dawn, rather than a supplicant or a dying _Bravo,_ it was the Bear who entered the temple, glimpsing the antechamber of the House of Black and White for the first time since the principal elder had spoken the words that gave the boy his face. It was all the same as he had left it, he mused as he began to move down the long, wide corridor leading to the main temple chamber. Nothing much ever changed within the temple, he supposed, but it _felt_ different. _He_ felt different.

The Lyseni boy made his way to the small dining hall where several acolytes and masters had already gathered to break their fast. The Bear noted that the greetings he received upon entering seemed different as well; filled with more respect, somehow. Little Loric gave him a look that was almost _reverential_ (a look the Bear had only seen the young boy spare for the Cat and the principal elder before now), and knowing the price paid to earn such a look left the Bear with only a sour expression to return to the boy. Loric shrank back and dropped his head, gazing at his plate. The older acolyte wished he could feel bad about that, but he didn't.

The large Lyseni glanced about the table, noting the faces there. None belonged to his sister. He was simultaneously disappointed and relieved. He had thought of her often in his absence and wondered at her welfare, but not all of his thoughts were so generous. When he was in the mood for reason and logic, he understood that he could not blame the Cat for what had happened, but with his grief still so fresh, he did not find that he was often in the mood for reason or logic. He told himself over and over that he did not _choose_ his sister over his lover, for that was not the test presented to him. He told himself that even if he _had_ chosen his sister, the Cat was not to blame for his decisions. But sometimes in the still and quiet of the night, an unwelcome thought crept into his head and taunted him. It was the thought that if the choice _had_ truly been given to him, and he had to decide between the two women who meant the most to him in his life, he _would_ have chosen his sister over Olive, and because he could not forgive himself for thinking it, he could not forgive the Cat for the truth of it.

There were small fish fried to crisps on the table, along with warm bread and honey. Fresh figs, clotted cream, and boiled gulls' eggs were piled in separate bowls which were being passed around. The Bear filled his plate and ate his meal without tasting, his mind flickering back and forth between the bleak past and the uncertain future. The boy had been summoned back to the temple by the Rat's master and told that he must undertake one final task before his trial was complete and he could take his vows. The acolytes' feast was a day away and his presence was required. He had not been told yet of the details of his final test, but in truth, he had spent little time wondering on it. Whatever it was, it could not be more difficult than what he had already done.

He closed his eyes, rubbing at his temples to relieve the sudden headache that had taken him. There, in the dark that existed behind his lids, the Lyseni acolyte saw Olive's face before him; the face of his lover as it had appeared when she lay beneath him, her plump cheeks flushed, her dimples showing as she smiled up at him with her damnable _trust_ and _love_. The Bear pushed back from the table so suddenly that it startled those sitting nearest him. He rose to leave but before he could round the table, in walked the Cat, flanked by the master she referred to as _the handsome man._ The girl's shoulder was brushing casually against the arm of the Rat's master and the two were apparently locked in some sort of heated discussion.

Loric called a cheerful greeting to the girl and drew her attention away from whatever argument she was having with the handsome master. When she looked away from the Faceless assassin and into the dining hall, she immediately spotted her newly arrived brother standing across the room from her and stopped short. The Bear and the Cat were both frozen in place and after the eternity of a few seconds, a look of undisguised relief and elation broke over the girl's face and she moved with the swiftness of a deer around the table and barreled into her brother, wrapping her thin arms around him as far as she could reach. Her brother's hesitancy lasted only a beat and then he was crushing her against him, muffling her joyful laughter with the hard bulk of his chest and arms. The two acolytes did not heed the disapproving looks they were receiving from some seated around the table. The temple was a place of extreme restraint and such exuberant behavior was not often seen within its walls. Even knowing this, the Cat found herself quite unable to exert any more self-control than she already had and the Bear found that he did not care one whit about anyone's judgment just then.

The girl stood on her toes grabbed the Lyseni's neck, pulling his head down so that she could place kisses on each cheek before she whispered softly in his ear, "You have been sorely missed, brother."

"Let the boy breathe, little wolf," called the handsome man in an exasperated tone. "He's only just arrived back home."

The Cat felt the master plucking at her doublet and pulling her away from her brother. She released the Bear with reluctance but gave him a wide smile as she took the seat next to the one he had just abandoned. The Lyseni sat down next to her, his desire to leave the small hall draining from him as suddenly as his insupportable blame of her for all that had happened. After they had settled in their chairs, his hand sought hers under the table and the girl nearly gasped with the force of her brother's warm grip.

"Your brother's return is fortuitous, little wolf," the handsome man remarked quietly as he sat in the empty seat on the Cat's other side. "I have matters requiring my attention this morning and now you have someone with whom to spar."

"What _matters_?" the girl wanted to know.

"Always so curious," he sneered. "Perhaps I plan to investigate the confusion with your _laundry_."

That wrought a glare from her, and it brought a look of confusion to the Bear's face but he said nothing. He knew his sister would tell him later, if she wanted him to know. The Lyseni sensed the tension between the Rat's master and his sister and wondered at its cause. _What had happened during his brief absence?_

"You would be wise to remember what I once told you about being _gutted_ ," the girl muttered under hear breath. The Bear heard this as well and was just as confused by it as he had been by the _laundry_ remark. The handsome master, however, seemed perfectly aware of the Cat's meaning and his sneer turned into a delighted smile.

"Am I to understand that you spoke with your master about us, little wolf?" the master asked in low tones, grinning all the while. He leaned closer into her and his breath came hot in her ear, his words only loud enough for her to hear. "Did you describe our dalliances in detail, I wonder?"

The girl pursed her lips and made him no answer. The handsome man pressed her further.

"Did you at least tell him how you stuck your tongue in my ear?"

" _That_ , I did tell him about, actually," she replied curtly as she pulled her ear away from his mouth, and then hissed, " _and I didn't stick it in your ear._ "

Her words drew an astonished look from the master assassin.

"Oh? I'm surprised, my girl. I can't imagine that he took it well."

"He did not seem particularly troubled," the Cat revealed, thinking back to Jaqen's teasing response about her _tongue_ when the girl had fought through her embarrassment to explain what had transpired between _Mattine_ and _Owen_ under Biro's roof. "Still, I might stay clear of him for a while if I were you."

"To avoid being _gutted_?" the master laughed. The girl nodded.

"You may be a bloody nuisance, but I still have need of your instruction."

The Bear could not believe his ears. He loved his sister, but the insolent way in which she was addressing this master was so bold, he could not fathom why it was being tolerated with such good humor. It was true that none but the three of them had heard the offensive remarks, but even so… he had trained with the Rat's master on multiple occasions throughout his years as an acolyte and had never known the man to be particularly tolerant of impudence or cheek. For all of his smirking smiles, this master could be quite cold and did not hesitate to mete out harsh correction.

 _What is going on here?_ he wondered. He recalled that the Rat had always been convinced that their sister received special favor because she herself provided _special favors_ to certain masters. It was something of nasty rumor the Rat himself had perpetrated but that the Bear had never truly accepted. Even in the days when there was no love lost between himself and his sister, when the Lyseni had felt more wariness than appreciation of her, he still respected her skill. He did not believe those skills extended to her talents on her back, however. But what was he to make of this strange indulgence of her disrespect by the Rat's master? He must speak with his sister and find out what was going on in the temple, to make sure she was not putting herself in danger. Perhaps they would have the opportunity while they were sparring, assuming the Cat wasn't simply hell bent on beating him into cowering submission with her tiny skewer.

The boy smiled slightly at the thought, and it was the first time he remembered smiling since…

_Since._

* * *

The two Faceless Men strolled in the cool morning shade of the courtyard garden, moving slowly along the dark stone path together in companionable silence. The day had dawned a half-hour past but the sun had not yet climbed high enough in the sky to breach the tall walls of the garden. The Lorathi gazed up at the top of the wall past a certain lemon tree and he could just picture a lovely girl overtopping it, giving him a mocking salute with a smirk on her face before she disappeared over the edge. The thought made him smile, a small reprieve from the tension boiling within him as he walked at the principal elder's side.

Jaqen was turning over the various mysteries he had yet to solve as he moved along the path in the company of the one man he believed possessed the answers to all of his questions. He tried to conjure the words it would take to convince this _kindly man_ to reveal what he knew about a girl being sent, without warning, into a place where her false face was sure to be recognized. He tried to determine the appropriate phrase to pull the details of a certain canal plot from his former master. He tried to understand what it would take to inspire the principal elder to reveal the greater hidden plans into which his lovely girl was being unwittingly pulled. Before the proper words made themselves known, however, the elder began to speak, and the opportunity was lost amid concerns surrounding even greater threats.

"The girl is in danger, brother," the older man began in a voice devoid of emotion. There was no need for him to clarify _which_ girl he meant and Jaqen did not play coy.

"What is this danger?" the Lorathi inquired, instantly wary.

"Assassins," the principal elder stated simply, and when he did, the younger assassin assumed his former mentor referred to his _brothers_ , and while it chilled him, he felt a sense of relief as well; relief that if some faction within the order of the Faceless Men was plotting against his lovely girl and the principal elder was warning him about such a plot, then it must mean the his former master was not himself _involved_ with it. Jaqen was surprised by the intensity of his relief at the knowledge. He had not realized how much regard he still held for the older man and how much love he still bore him until he felt the sudden lightness wash over him as his master spoke. When Jaqen heard his master's warning, he thought the elder must _not_ be involved in the various mysteries and dangers surrounding Arya and it was then that he recognized how much that possible involvement had been weighing on him.

His relief was short-lived, however, being as it was merely a product of a simple misunderstanding and his own desire for it to be the truth.

"Word has reached me from Pentos, brother. You will recall that one of our masters was sent on a mission there some time ago. A mission that might have been yours."

Jaqen nodded to indicate that he did indeed recall, but he was confused. _Pentos? What had Pentos to do with a threat to his apprentice?_

"He had occasion to cross paths with a man who possesses particular knowledge of the Westerosi court and it was from him that our brother learned that both the girl's identity and location have been compromised."

"A man does not understand," Jaqen stated tersely. "How? Who?"

"Word reached Kings Landing aboard one of the many ships that travel between Braavos and that port. The girl has a very distinctive look, I'm afraid, and spends far too much time freely walking the docks of Ragman's Harbor."

"So some Westerosi sailor or ship's captain has given her away," the younger assassin mused. "But why should that matter? Who would wish a young girl harm, from all the way across the Narrow Sea?"

"The survival of Arya Stark poses a threat to the iron throne and its alliances, in a time when the future is already uncertain due to other claimants and their recent arrival in Dorne. It also poses a much larger threat for those who currently hold the North _in her name_. You were the one who brought us the news of the youngest Stark daughter being wed, giving her claim to her husband."

"Just so," the Lorathi agreed.

"Imagine the _inconvenience_ it might cause certain parties if a living, breathing Stark heir were found and returned home, and if this marriage to the Bolton bastard could be proven invalid. Or, even if she were brought to Dorne to treat with those many consider to be the true heirs to the iron throne. She could speak for the whole of the North and choose to line up her power behind a dragon banner."

"So the Westerosi court demands the girl's death?"

"I imagine the court knows nothing of it at all. Cersei Lannister, however, along with Roose Bolton, has a vested interest in preventing the triumphant return of Arya Stark," the Kindly Man pointed out placidly. "It seems between the two of them, they were able to finance a sorrowful man to aid them in their endeavor."

Jaqen scoffed at that.

"This girl could slay a sorrowful man in her sleep," he said. "She will not fear this threat."

"I would prefer she not know of it," the elder said. "There is much else that demands her focus just now, and this distraction might prove detrimental to her success."

"A man understands," Jaqen remarked quietly, "and he will not allow these pathetic _assassins_ within ten leagues of his apprentice."

"I had hoped you would say that."

The Lorathi raised his eyebrows in surprise, knowing his master had something in mind then. When the principal elder began to explain the mission he intended to authorize, Jaqen listened intently, slowly starting to nod.

"Of course, this thing does not have to be done by your hand, brother," the principal elder allowed after he had detailed his plans. "This mission can be given to any of the Faceless Men. In fact, now that the girl's training is at an end and your brother will no longer be occupied with it, I had thought to send him..."

"No," the Lorathi interrupted. "A man will do this thing." _He would be damned if he would entrust his_ handsome _brother with Arya's safety. The only way to be sure this thing was done right, the only way to guarantee that his lovely girl would remain unharmed, was to see to it himself._

Just as the principal elder intended.

"I'm sorry to say that acceptance of this mission means you will miss the girl earning her face and taking her vows. I know what a disappointment that will be for you."

"May a man not depart immediately after?"

"I'm afraid not, brother. This must be accomplished as soon as possible, lest we put the girl at undue risk. You brother in Pentos can intercept this sorrowful man before he gets anywhere near Braavos, but if you do not leave immediately for the west and eliminate the root of the threat, they will send another and another. Lannister gold is plentiful and Bolton ambition even greater. The next ship sails at dawn in two days' time."

The Lorathi was saddened at the thought of not being there when his lovely girl earned her face. He knew she might even have need of him during that time, or have want of his encouragement, for earning a face was no easy thing, but his disappointment did not compare with his need to protect her. As much as the girl strove to become _no one,_ it seemed that in Westeros, she was still someone very important indeed.

"A man will at least be able to attend the feast," Jaqen said, more to himself than his master. Nonetheless, the elder replied.

"Yes," he agreed. "You will be able to say your goodbyes there. But do not worry, brother, for you shall not be parted from us for long."

 _No,_ Jaqen thought, _it will not be long, for the gift has never been delivered as quickly as a man will deliver it to Cersei Lannister and Roose Bolton._

Lost in his own thoughts, the Lorathi master missed the Kindly Man's small smile and glinting eyes.

* * *

"I yield!" the Bear grunted for the fourth time that morning. He and his sister had drilled together and then had been sparring for what seemed like hours. His shirt was stuck to his back with sweat and as the Cat pulled away the blunted tip of her blade from his throat with a laugh, he bent to retrieve the training sword that she had knocked from his hand. Giving the girl a fatigued shrug, the hulking boy moved to the low bench on the side of the training room and sat as he swiped at his damp forehead with his hand.

"Shall we have another go?" the Cat asked

"Aren't you _tired,_ sister?"

"I never tire of beating you, Bear!" she replied, grinning.

The boy groaned and leaned further back as he set his blade aside and crossed his arms over his chest. His posture made it glaringly apparent that he no desire to spar with the girl again that morning. The Cat pursed her lips but after a moment, she dropped to the floor near her brother's feet, propping her back against one leg of the bench and resting her temple against the Bear's knee. After a minute, she felt the boy drop his hand to her head, brushing the damp strands of her hair back from her face and then his palm settled on her nape as his fingers began to gently knead the knotted muscles of her neck. It felt good after their hard sparring and the Cat sighed deeply, closing her eyes. They sat in silence for a while as their panting slowed to steady breathing and the droplets of sweat that sprang up upon their brows stopped forming. When the Lyseni's fingers finally stilled and his kneading motions ceased, his sister addressed him.

"I'm very glad you've returned," she murmured softly. "I've missed you."

She heard the boy sigh behind her but he did not speak and so she continued.

"I've been... Rather, I had thought..." The girl stumbled over her words, wanting to express her sympathy and her own grief as well as her worry for her brother, but was unsure of how to proceed. He had been so stoic, so _quiet_ since his return. She did not wish to prick at his raw emotion or disturb his peace, but she fervently desired to determine whether he _had_ any peace, and if not, to provide him some. She twisted around to face the Bear, rising up on her knees and leaning over his lap, pressing her cheek into his belly as she wound her arms around his waist and hugged him fiercely. Still not speaking, the boy wrapped his arms around his sister's shoulders and dropped his head down heavily. After a long minutes of this silent embrace, the Cat felt one drop, then another and another; warm tears pelting her hair and forehead.

 _The Bear is crying,_ she realized, and her heart hurt for him.

"I'm so sorry," the girl whispered. "I'm so, so sorry."

"You can't imagine, Cat," the boy told her hoarsely. "You can't imagine what it's like."

"I know," she said in soothing tones, pulling back from his embrace to look up at his face. Her heart clenched at the sight of the streaking tears on his face. She wiped them away with soft fingers as she shushed him, saying over and over, "I know. I know."

"No," he replied sadly. "No, you do not know. I hope you _never_ know."

The girl stood and turned to sit next to her brother on the bench, pushing against his side with her shoulder, trying to bleed some comfort into him by her contact.

"I didn't know, Bear. I worried for her, yes, but I didn't think that they would ask you... I... brought Syrio here, after Biro's feast. I went to the inn that night. I wanted... I felt I needed to tell... _her._ So she wouldn't worry about him. And when I got there, I saw... it all."

"You saw Olive?" her brother whispered, closing his eyes as his face crumpled.

"I saw them _all._ "

The boy opened his eyes then and looked at his sister, confused.

"What do you mean?" he asked her.

The girl grew quiet. She had not realized that the Bear did not know about the others. She had assumed that he knew all.

 _"What do you mean, sister?"_ the Lyseni demanded.

"Bear..."

Her voice was a caution that he did not heed.

"Tell me," he whispered.

"Will. And Staaviros."

At first, the Bear's dull eyes remained unchanged, but slowly, she saw understanding dawn in them and he clenched his square jaw and squeezed his eyes shut tightly. The boy drew in a sharp breath through his nose.

"Of course," he whispered after a minute. "Of course."

"It wasn't your fault," she told him, her declaration fierce and assured. She found his hand and squeezed it. He jerked his hand away from her, refusing to allow her to comfort him; to _excuse_ him.

"If not mine, then whose?" the boy muttered, scrubbing at his face with his rough palms.

"It was too late, and you had to obey," the girl told him, folding her hands carefully in her lap. "I know this very well. You had _no choice_ but to obey."

This wrought bitter laughter from her brother and then he lashed out at her.

"What does _the Cat_ know of obedience?" the Bear demanded. "When have _you_ ever done anything that was other than _exactly_ what pleased you?"

The girl started to protest but her brother clamped one hand over her mouth before she could say two words. His brow was furrowed and she could see the worry heavy upon it. After a minute, he uncovered her mouth and placed his hands on either side of her face, drawing her into him and pressing a soft kiss on her brow.

"I had a choice, sister," the Lyseni told her, his voice hoarse and cracking. He swallowed hard to regain his composure before he continued, "Just not the one you think."

"I do not like to see you so... _distraught._ What can I do, brother? What would you have of me?" she asked him, leaning back so that she could regard his face.

"I would have you be... _safe._ And _smart._ I would not lose you. I would not wish for it all to have been in vain."

"You will not lose me," the girl assured him, smiling up at him and sounding as if she were comforting a small child after a nightmare. The boy's expression became sour.

"You are doing _nothing_ to fulfill that promise," the Bear spat. The girl flinched at his tone and he shook his head slightly and drew in a deep breath, looking contrite, as if he had not meant to be so harsh. "I heard the way you spoke to the Rat's master this morning, sister. I fear he will..." The boy paused and considered his words before finally saying, "I worry for you. I worry that there will be retribution."

The Cat snorted at the thought. Her brother gave her a sharp look.

"I do not wonder at your concern, but it is misplaced," she told him. "Honestly, I believe he enjoys it."

"I cannot recall him ever _enjoying_ insolence."

His sister shrugged, offering no explanation other than to say, "It has always been so between us."

"You are not witless, sister. Have you never wondered at the _reason_ for this seeming indulgence?"

A small frown appeared on the girl's face as she listened to her brother. In truth, she had never wondered at it; had not thought of it as _indulgence._ Much as she had spent weeks insisting to herself that _it is not like that between us_ when she considered Jaqen and her feelings for him, she had always thought, _this is how it is between us_ whenever she and the handsome man would wrangle verbally. She had not known him well before he agreed to take over her training, and so she had assumed the way he was with _her_ was the way he was with _everyone._ She felt no threat from him, even though Jaqen had warned her. She felt no threat from him even now, when her brother seemed to be indicating that she should. If she had instinct in abundance and it did not tell her to fear the handsome master, was it less reliable than she had been led to believe? Was she simply being foolhardy to trust her gut, or were her master and her brother being overly cautious?

"Please," the girl begged her brother softly. "I have ached for you and wondered... I just wanted to know that you were safe and well. Now that you are here, I only want to... make it _better_ for you. With all that you have had to endure, I could not bear it if you worried yourself about _me_."

"Someone must, sister, since you will not worry for yourself," her brother admonished. "Sometimes I think you see a different world than the rest of us see."

"And sometimes I think every man under this roof thinks I'm a stupid little girl," she groused.

"No," he responded immediately. "No, I think you are the best of us. I think you are..." His voice trailed off and he looked away from her, staring across the empty room and seeming to contemplate his words before he spoke again. When he did, he talked of something else entirely. "I thought I was saving lives and sparing pain, but in the end, it was all the same."

Slowly, the Cat reached for her brother's hand again, gently taking it in her own. This time, he did not pull away from her touch and he turned his gaze back to her face. He looked pained.

"What are you talking about, Bear? Did you think you could save Will and Staaviros by sacrificing Olive?"

"No, sister. I thought I was saving..." He stopped speaking then and shook his head, looking away from her. He seemed to vacillate between anger and sadness and the Cat did not wonder at it. "It doesn't matter. _It doesn't matter_. They threatened three if I did not comply. They got three though I did all they asked."

"You were threatened?" she asked him, confused. "Who threatened you? And what with?"

The boy turned his gaze fully on his sister then, grabbing both of her wrists tightly and boring into her eyes with his own. His expression was overflowing with some combination of regret and concern and rage. She flinched back from the power of the emotions shown on his face with a small gasp.

"There is still time for you, Cat," he said, his speech pressured and raw. The intensity of his voice, his demeanor, and his expression left her quite breathless.

"What do you mean, Bear? What are you saying?"

"Run, sister."

* * *

 _ **Me and You-**_ Jake Bugg (We both should believe the path that we chose)


	54. Chapter 54

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very tiny "M" language warning. The Bear can be salty when he's drunk.

* * *

 

_No one plans to take the path that brings you lower..._

* * *

The Bear had left his sister's side shortly after seemingly urging her to flee the temple (indeed, to quit Braavos altogether). His exhortation had caught her off guard and so she had said little, but she understood very well the dark, agonized place from which his words arose and she felt a deep sadness (and a pervasive guilt) as she considered all that had led to the Lyseni to direct her thusly. As the Cat considered the boy's charge ( _run, sister_ ), she kept expecting her thoughts to devolve into a chaotic jumble from which it would be impossible to discern any wisdom or strategy, yet they did not. Instead, no matter how she tried to weigh her brother's advice, his _warning_ , her mind kept arriving at the same inescapable truth.

_I cannot leave Jaqen._

Of course, she had no way of knowing that at that very moment, her master was making plans to leave _her._

That the Lorathi's inevitable farewell would be couched in the noble service of assuring his lovely girl's safety would, in the end, provide no comfort to her. This would be in part due to the fact that there was almost no reason she would consider adequate justification for such a long separation; for being torn from this man for whom she had only recently allowed herself to admit her love; her compulsive _need_. It would also be due, in part, to the fact that she could not be allowed to know of the reason for Jaqen's departure. _The Kindly Man had forbidden it, and this was an order that her master would prove unwilling to disobey._

But she did not know any of this as she worked out how she felt about what the Bear had said to her. And so, ignorant of what was to come, the Cat simply puzzled out her brother's state of mind as she considered his concern for her.

The girl knew that the Bear spoke out of his overwhelming grief and his boiling rage at those who had forced his hand. Losing Olive was a hard burden to bear. _Killing her,_ though... That was an _impossible_ one. Her brother had spent almost a decade behind the walls of the temple, his training dedicated to one purpose: _death_. To learn and study such truths abstractly was one thing. To live them, and to live them so _intensely_ , was quite another. The Bear had been suddenly and agonizingly confronted with the heavy cost of his obligation to the temple, and it had left him reeling. _No,_ she thought. _Not reeling, but crushed, rather. Flattened with bitterness and sorrow._ It was only natural that he would want to spare his sister the pain of what he had discovered. The girl wished that she had been able to convince him not to worry for her. She had been unable to find the proper words to tell him what she felt, however. The words that came to her seemed too judgmental, too harsh, too unfeeling to say aloud, especially to someone in his state.

_I'm not like you, brother. I am not half so good; my heart is dark._

_I have danced in the shadow of death and have drunk the blood of men since I was just a little girl._

_I have created more corpses than I can even recall anymore, and none of them have burdened me. One more will not break me._

And, perhaps the most ungracious thought of all, _I have worked hard for this life. You will not take it from me._

The Cat chastised herself for thinking it—she knew her brother meant well. She ought to have been more tolerant of his worry for her, but with her own trial approaching, she did not wish for the distraction. She did not wish for uncertainties and second-thoughts to cloud her mind. While he had been absent, the girl had longed for her brother's companionship and was beginning to realize that she loved him with a sort of fierce dedication that reminded her more than a little of her feelings for her brother Jon, but still, she could not heed the boy. She could not follow this direction of his. _Not now._ _Not when she was about to get everything she had ever wanted. Not now that she had finally discovered the missing piece of her puzzle; the piece that perfectly fit into the ragged, painful, gaping space inside of her and made her whole again; the piece that was Jaqen._

Besides, if she ran, who would the Bear have? _The Rat_? She snorted slightly at the thought. He wasn't like to be much of a comfort to the Lyseni. No, her large brother had need of her (whether he liked to admit it or not) and he wasn't thinking rationally, so poisoned by his own pain was he. It might take him a bit to realize it, but realize it he would, and then he would be most grateful that she had not listened to his somber and biased advice.

The Cat smiled to think of it, the gratitude her brother would show her someday when he recognized that she had not abandoned him here to live and work friendless for the rest of his days. She would be gracious when that day came, and place a cool hand on his cheek and say that he owed her nothing; that his happiness alone was enough for her.

The girl finally left the training room and returned to her cell, donning her black and white acolyte's robe and then headed for the small dining hall to help serve the midday meal. _Valar dohaeris._

* * *

The Bear was in the kitchen with Umma, working in silence to finish the midday meal. Even though she was not a large woman, and was near a grandmotherly age, the cook still scared the large boy a bit, for she was just as like to strike a slow acolyte's knuckles with an iron ladle as give the next direction for the preparation of the meal. The woman usually found the lumbering boy burdensome to work with in the kitchen, his large size often serving to block her path between the hearth, the ovens, and the shelves where she stored her spices and ingredients. The nicest thing Umma had ever uttered about the boy was that he was an "oaf." The meanest thing she had ever uttered made his ears turn red to think about, even now, years later. Today, though... She seemed to understand the state of his mind and left him to his tasks with minimal interruption. When she was required to speak to him, it was in soft tones that he had never before known to escape her mouth, except perhaps once or twice when he had wandered into the kitchen and overheard the cook speaking with his sister as the girl helped the older woman with her tasks.

_The Cat was certainly favored by the Braavosi woman,_ he thought, but the observation was made without rancor. After all, the sentiment was one which was understandable to him, for it was a feeling akin to his own; he certainly favored his sister as well.

In that quiet space of time during which the Lyseni was _not_ being berated in the usual way by the cook, he was left to his own thoughts, dark and painful as they were. In an attempt to bury Olive's smiling face so that her trusting eyes did not accuse him, the Bear replayed some of his encounter with the Cat from the morning. He called up the image of his sister's face at the moment he had urged her to leave. She had been... _surprised._ She looked almost as if the idea had never occurred to her before, though he knew that to be untrue. He was aware that she thought of Westeros and the North from time to time, and those she had lost there (as well as those she had left behind and still hoped to find again someday). He also knew that she had struggled mightily with the idea of finally abandoning those hopes (as she was regularly urged to by the masters and elders of the order).

Despite the disapproval of those who trained the girl, her dreams of a return home to her brother and her sister remained. She still clung to the idea that she might find them once again and cobble together some semblance of a family from the ragged remains of the Starks, so it wasn't as if she had never considered leaving the order before. They didn't speak of it often, it was true, perhaps only once or twice in the past, but the idea wasn't a foreign one to her. It was for this reason that her utter shock that he would say such a thing had, in turn, surprised _him._

But what surprised him even more was that as he spoke the words, he saw them playing out in his head, pictured perfectly as if he were gazing at a scene depicted on a hanging tapestry. It was a tableau of the Cat, her few possessions tossed haphazardly into a leather satchel slung over her shoulder, leaving the temple in the dead of night, never to return. Most surprising of all was that in his vision of this departure, the Bear saw himself at her side, running with her, hand in hand.

_How strange,_ he recalled thinking then, _but how obviously... right._

Arrested by the look of disbelief upon his sister's face and confronted with his own unexpected notion that he might leave too, the boy had stopped speaking, unable to articulate further what it was he wanted for her; what he wanted for _himself._ Freedom. Safety. Peace. _Redemption._ The Bear felt the desire for these things keenly just then; the want of them bringing him so sharp an ache that he nearly cried out from the piercing pain of it. He did not have the words to express those things, his _wants_ , to her, and so the boy had simply said _run, sister,_ and then had abruptly left her (probably confused) in the training room to attend to his other duties and brood over both his great loss and his emerging hope.

_Would I really run with her?_ he asked himself as he stirred the kettle at Umma's terse direction. It had never been a fantasy of his; he had not thought of it even once during his brief exile from the temple, seeing instead only the endless blackness brought on by his grief stretching out before him, the future unclear, the past an ever-present dagger in his chest. It would have been understandable if he _had_ pictured it and dreamed of it and planned it out; if he had spoken to a ship's captain and arranged passage for two; if he had quickly gathered supplies in secret and rehearsed the speech he would use to convince her; if he had considered the obstacles and devised a strategy for overcoming them. But he had done none of that. It wasn't until he saw her face again that morning, grey eyes narrowed as she argued with the Rat's master, that he began to understand that she placed herself in danger without even realizing it and he must stop her from coming to grief. The Bear had watched the bow of her lip distort and move as her mouth curled into a smirk while she causally insulted the master she referred to as _handsome;_ the same man he had once seen snap the necks of two sailors with unbelievable ease, one immediately after the other, as quick as a lightning strike, without mussing one perfect hair on his head.

_This most fearsome man, this ruthless assassin, the girl claimed was no threat at all to her._

It was then that he realized she had to go.

_For her sake. And for his. He could not bear another loss._

The Bear had not yet taken his vows; hadn't completed his trial, so his service was now only obligated by his own sense of honor and commitment (and for years, he had been held in place by the idea that there wasn't much else for him anyway, but to serve. Where else would he have gone?) There was nothing real to hold him here, then; nothing left for the Bear outside of the walls of the temple, and that was never more true than _now,_ with his loss of the bouncing tavern girl who had somehow claimed his heart.

_Not just somehow,_ he though in silent resentment. _My sister practically shoved us together._

He berated himself for thinking it; told himself that he could not dishonor what he felt for Olive with bitterness or regret; reasoned that the Cat had never intended for them to _fall in love_. After all, had she not warned him to quit the wench before something untoward happened?

_Untoward,_ he grimaced inwardly. _If_ untoward _means choking the life out of the woman you love because you first failed at your attempt to poison her, then yes, what had befallen Olive was distinctly_ untoward.

And both Will and Staaviros had been offered to Him of Many Faces as well, but only as props in a mummer's farce; the necessary details required to sell a lie the Lyseni did not understand the need to tell. He did not know the innkeeper and his helpmate well, but they seemed nice enough fellows. Still, had he been directed to kill _them_ rather than the girl he loved, he would not have balked. His long years of training within the temple had imparted to him a particular detachment that was useful in such situations. _Valar morghulis._ He might have worried about telling Olive. Or, perhaps he would simply have chosen not to tell her, to spare her pain. But now, with her gone, the deaths of Staaviros and Will disturbed him because he knew they would have pained _her_ and because they seemed to mock his efforts to choose to do the _right thing_. He understood now that all freedom was an illusion in the House of Black and White, and he felt stupid for not recognizing it earlier.

The Lyseni's mind then drifted back to his sister and he sighed, the movement of his chest and the drawing in of breath at the nose accomplished as a slow, deep, resigned action that reflected his mood perfectly. Clarity settled over him as he exhaled and a new calm seemed to seep through his skin and into his bones.

All that was precious to him anymore was now within these walls, and it called to some noble part of him; some deep-seated protective instinct blossomed inside of him and he vowed to save his sister, even from her own folly. This time, he _would_ do the right thing.

He would not fail again.

* * *

Earlier that morning, the Lorathi assassin had just caught a glimpse of his lovely girl's retreating form as she passed the dark, still pool and left the main temple chamber, entering the side corridor. She was in the company of her large brother, the Lyseni boy who had recently earned his face.

_He's back,_ Jaqen thought. _They must be bound for the training room_.

Their path and the time of day indicated they had left the small dining hall together and the master felt a slight twinge of something as he watched the boy reach down for the girl's hand. Perhaps it was envy, because _he_ had not been able to dine with her and it was _not_ him who was escorting her to the only place she seemed to feel at home here in Braavos; the place where steel sang and she could dance the dance she loved most of all.

_For now,_ he thought with an uncharacteristic surge of hope, thinking that someday he hoped to teach her a different sort of dance; one that she might like even better. But that was for the future. Just presently, he had work to do; duties that needed tending. Jaqen saw his apprentice disappear from his view as she slipped into the stairwell on her brother's heels and he tried to quell the jealousy which distracted him. The master's envy was possibly amplified by the thought that it would be some time before _he_ dined with or sparred with the girl again, because his mission would take him far and away, and he would be gone for as long as it took to do what must be done.

For as long as it took to make her safe.

_For once, duty and love were not at odds, though. In this case, his duty served his love, and so he could not make himself regret it._

It was not the first time he had left the girl behind in order that he might travel and fulfill the will of the Many-Faced god and the order. The last time, he had left her in Braavos, trusting his master to see to her in his absence, and he had told her that she should grow her hair long. The time before that, he had painted her with blood and gifted her with an iron coin, _his_ iron coin, before he taught her the words that would eventually bring her to him. What would he say to her this time?

As the Lorathi exited the ebony and weirwood doors and descended the stone steps en route to the harbor, he thought back to their previous farewells; the night he showed a girl of one and ten what it meant to be Faceless and then left her to wonder at the magic even though his heart ached at the thought of abandoning her in that place of pain and savagery and death; the day he had told a girl of four and ten she could use her natural gifts to put men at ease before she slipped her blade between their ribs, even though saying it had betrayed his own conscience a little.

He called up both images of her, studying them side by side in his mind. A bloody shift and a loose tunic; a forehead creased with worry and a face arranged into a fierce scowl; words both plaintive ( _please don't go, Jaqen_ ) and petulant ( _what do I care what men want to see?_ ) The eyes were the same though, no matter the age; no matter the scene or circumstance. Fathomless depths to rival the unknowable valleys at the bottom of the churning Narrow Sea, silvery grey and wide, a narrow ribbon of the deepest blue ringing the pupils; eyes he had only recently recognized were filled with a promise of the future, _his future,_ a thing he had not realized even existed until he looked at her, _really looked at her_ , and saw the girl instead of the instrument; understood the truth of the choice he had made for himself; accepted that the part of him that had become _someone_ was growing more prominent and precious to him than anything else he had ever been or might ever be.

When had it all changed? And why? It could not be something so banal as the fact that after she had flowered, she had rapidly changed from a fierce, skinny child who was a study in anger and defiance into some ethereal beauty. He was not so shallow as all that; would not think to jeopardize the life he had built here for a pretty face or the promise of a warm and willing body in his bed.

The Lorathi thought back to the last time he had parted ways with his apprentice.

She had sported a thick mop of hair, ragged and scruffy at the ends but nonetheless a glossy brown that caught the light in the courtyard and shone like polished mahogany. Back then, she was still mostly angled limbs and too thin, womanly curves only half filled out when he left Braavos nearly twenty moons past. Even still, he knew she would not remain so for long. The mild awkwardness of her adolescent appearance belied her grace as she danced, swinging her narrow blade so naturally, so intuitively that it seemed as if she had been born holding it. _Been born_ to _hold it._ The last day they sparred before he boarded the ship for the west, she had been about to hack off her hair with a dagger, claiming annoyance at the way it flew in her face. It was his voice that spoke the words that stayed the girl's hand, but the inspiration for those words her master uttered had come from the principal elder, with whom Jaqen had met earlier that day in the same courtyard.

_"She is a woman grown now, brother," the Kindly Man had said as the Lorathi peered through the leaves of the fig and lemon trees to see patches of the bright blue sky overhead._

_"No," Jaqen disagreed after a moment. He dropped his gaze to regard his master's face. "Not quite, but nearly."_

_"Yes. Yes, very nearly," the elder murmured. They walked further along the garden path in companionable silence for several more minutes before the older man spoke again. "I will defer to your judgment of course, as she is your apprentice to train as you see fit, but she is well past the age where she should be instructed in the gentler ways a woman may insinuate herself into circumstances and accomplish her goals. She may find that honeyed words and soft touches are more the deadly of her weapons, sharper than steel when applied correctly."_

_The Lorathi assassin instantly resisted the suggestion of his master._

_"A man does not wish this for his apprentice," Jaqen stated flatly. "Not yet."_

_"You cannot protect her forever."_

_The Lorathi bristled a bit at that._

_"A man will protect her as long as she is his apprentice. If this is not something you can agree to abide by in a man's absence, he is more than willing to bring the girl with him on this mission."_

_"No, brother, that will not be necessary. You do not need the distraction and I would not like to put her in danger with her training only half complete. As I have said, I will defer to your judgment and do as you wish. But the use of moon tea, at least... surely, you would not object to this instruction, in the unlikely event..."_

_"This is not a thing a man fears will befall a girl. You do not know her as a man does... she... is still so innocent, and not interested in these things. Only steel and service command her attention now." And revenge, he did not add._

_"Just so. For now, at least. But you should at least instruct her to allow her hair to grow. She should not strive so strenuously to look like an angry orphan all the time. With her womanly shape, her hair presents an odd picture now," the elder advised. "It will draw attention where she might wish to remain more obscure."_

_The Lorathi chuckled, saying, "Her shape is not yet so womanly, but a man takes your meaning. He will speak to her today."_

_"Yes, that would be wise," the Kindly Man agreed. "She walks the docks like rage made flesh. It is past time that she softened her appearance and looked more like the lady she is."_

The statement was somewhat odd and had been made quietly, almost as if the elder were not speaking to his former apprentice at all but rather to himself, and it had made Jaqen laugh a little, he recalled. It was not often that he found himself amused by anything the principal elder had to say.

_"A man suggests you do not let the girl hear you say that, or you will never get her to grow her hair."_

_"Indeed," the principal elder chuckled. "Well, as you are clearly the expert on how to motivate young women, I shall leave you to it."_

_"Valar morghulis, brother," Jaqen said respectfully with a small bow of his head._

_"Valar dohaeris, brother."_

_Later, the Lorathi master had suggested to the girl that they take their swords into the courtyard, as the day was particularly fine, the skies the brilliant blue he loved and did not know if he was like to see for some time amidst the haze and smoke of war and the autumn storms which plagued the Sunset Kingdoms. He drilled her for quite some time, reluctant to stop, driven to impart every bit of helpful instruction he could before leaving her in the hands of his brothers (and sister) once again. They crossed blades, but slowly, precisely; executing a complicated series of moves and counter moves called out as clipped instructions in a Lorathi accent. Jaqen concentrated on perfecting the girl's footwork and patiently tutored her with painstaking detail. She adapted easily to his direction; only needed to be shown or told once before she could competently execute a move. She was grace; brilliance; natural talent sharpened to a fine point with relentless practice. She was his greatest achievement, or would be, by the time she spoke her vows._

_She was a dark and dangerous thing, so like himself, coiled and ready to strike; the perfect weapon; the ultimate tool._

_A mistress of death._

_Rage made flesh._

_He would have pressed her on and on, but he saw that she was flagging. They had been at it much longer than usual, her not wanting to admit her fatigue (it made him smile as much as it exasperated him, her stubbornness) and him not wanting leave; not when there was so much else to do in order to properly to prepare her; not when there was so much else he needed to teach her. With a sigh, the master assassin bade his apprentice stop and there was a hint of gratitude upon her face as she dropped to the dark stone bench near the end of the path that winded its way through the courtyard. The sun was beginning to sink lower in the sky, casting long shadows across the garden. Jaqen was staring at the girl's face, thinking on what he had discussed with the principal elder earlier, feeling a vague sense of uneasiness as he considered the idea at which his master had hinted; that his apprentice was nearly grown; that there would soon come a time when she might be called upon to use her wiles, her beauty (whether her own or that borrowed with glamours or blood and sacrificed flesh), and her body to fulfill the will of the Many-Faced god. His mouth pinched slightly and his eyes narrowed as he considered it._

_He was certain that the idea should not bother him as much as it did, but then he told himself that it was only because she was still so young;_ too young _. As the man who tempted her to this place, as her master, he owed her his protection._

_Still, the elder had proven to be remarkably flexible on this issue, and the younger assassin trusted his brother to keep his word. The Lorathi tried to push the distasteful idea from his mind, for he found the suggestion of the acolyte before him being cast in the role of_ temptress _or_ paramour _or anything of the like wholly upsetting to him. When he had quashed the notion, though, he found it was replaced with a nagging question; the question of why it was that he cared so much._

_Had he not done this thing himself? Even as a very young assassin, his vows still fresh on his tongue? He had not found it burdensome in the least._

_It is different for a man, he thought, but he knew that assertion was disingenuous. His sister would laugh and laugh at him if she heard him say it._

_He was so lost in his own contemplation that he nearly missed his apprentice withdrawing her sharp little knife from her boot and grasping half of her hair in one fist as she raised her blade to her bunched tresses. He reached out and lightly touched the small hand which held her blade. She stopped her motion and looked at him, her grey eyes questioning under lifted brows._

_"A girl should grow her hair long," he finally said, recalling his master's words from earlier. The girl's eyes narrowed slightly and it caused him to lift one corner of his mouth in a half-smile. He gently tugged the bundle of her hair free from her grip and her other hand slowly descended until her knife lay flat against her thigh. He found his fingers sliding around the shell of her ear, tucking a sweat-dampened lock behind it, revealing one of her fair cheeks as he continued, "Men like to see a girl with flowing hair."_

_He knew it was the wrong thing to say as soon as the words left his mouth but he did not have a chance to amend his statement before the girl was spitting and hissing like a cat dunked in a bath. Or, rather like the girl herself when dunked in a bath. She was growling about how she didn't care about men, how long hair was stupid, and listing the reasons why it was smarter to cut her unruly mop. He had to suppress his urge to laugh at her surly truculence as he tried in vain to counter her argument. Of course, his headstrong apprentice was having none of it._

_So young, he thought once again, but then was distracted by her expression, her eyes widening slightly as she took on a faraway look. After a moment, she seemed to shake her head slightly as if denying something only she understood. Then her eyes were focused once again upon his face._

_Where did you go, lovely girl? he wondered, but did not ask._

_"An enemy sees a lovely girl walking towards him and appreciates her beauty; he is perhaps lulled by it," he told her, his tone almost patronizing as he offered his wisdom; the_ elder's _wisdom_. _"He does not reach for his sword. An enemy sees a_ warrior _striding toward him and his is_ not _lulled. He prepares to fight."_

_Her response was so typically full of bravado and so typically stubborn. Her master was both amused and frustrated by it; by_ her _. He tried to explain that she ought to use all of her advantages, but it felt somehow wrong as he said it. It was good advice, logical, and in giving it, he was keeping his vow to his master, but even as he said it, he was gripped with a wild desire to grasp her shoulders and shake her. He wanted to tell her, "Do not do this thing, lovely girl! Use steel, use poisons, use your bare hands if you must, but do not use your body. Do not use your kisses to deceive. Do not sacrifice all of your innocence for the sake of men who seek to control your gifts."_

_And as he thought it, some deeper part of him understood that what he really meant was, "Do not leave me."_

_Of course, it was him who did the leaving, boarding a ship bound for King's Landing before dawn the next morning. As the sun rose and the ship's captain ordered the mooring lines untied and pulled aboard, lifting the anchor in preparation to set sail, Jaqen was surprised to find that rather than the mission ahead, his mind lingered on the girl left behind._

_Any master would be concerned for his apprentice, left to the care of others in the midst of her training, he reasoned. As the days stretched into weeks on the endless sea, it was not her training that filled his thoughts, however, but rather the idea of her hair, and what it would look like grown out and long as the principal elder seemed to think fitting. He was surprised to find the idea invaded even his unconscious mind and he would often wake in his bunk below deck with the hazy, fading images of his dream still haunting him; pictures of his hand gently stroking the back of a girl's head, his fingers weaving themselves into her long, dark hair as he marveled at the softness. He never saw the girl's face, but he knew it was her, and as the vision slowly left him, the bright day becoming more real as the night faded away, he became aware that there was a sort of longing now inside of him; a desire to see her again and touch her as gently as he did in his dreams. And it was then he understood that at some point, he had stopped thinking of her as the perfect weapon and the ultimate tool and his greatest achievement and now only saw her as a lovely girl; his own lovely, lovely girl._

Jaqen neared the Purple Harbor just then, his memories having carried him from the temple to the docks without much conscious notice of his surroundings but the sharp sting of the salt air pulled him from his reverie. He strolled along the docks, eyes sharp, looking for his target. After several minutes, he spotted her: the _Titan's Daughter_.

_Good, she is in port,_ he thought as he approached the galley. Glancing up at the deck, he saw Ternesio Terys come into view as the captain peered over the rail at the docks below. He spotted Jaqen and gave a start but then smiled ruefully at the Lorathi.

_He had hoped that he had seen the last of a man,_ the assassin thought, smirking. The captain waved him up and Jaqen climbed the gangplank to arrange his passage to the capital city of Westeros.

* * *

The handsome man had finished stripping the face from a brazen _Bravo_ who had found his way into the temple to die at the feet of the weeping woman sometime during the night. He easily hoisted the body over his shoulder and carried the now faceless corpse to the room with the door in the outer wall. He meant to feed the eels. As the assassin slid the stiffening _Bravo_ through the port hole, he thought briefly of doing the same to a bound acolyte who was never meant to die. When he had participated in the _plot_ , he had not questioned the reasoning behind the action; had not wondered what it was meant to accomplish, for it was a direction of his master, and his trust of the man was implicit. The principal elder had given vague assurances that the girl would be fine and that the trial was necessary to assess how far her skills had developed, but the handsome man had not required such guarantees. At the time, the girl had meant little and less to him. It was enough that his assistance had been requested by the elder and, in turn, it was enough for the Rat that his master had requested _his_ assistance. Of course, the Rat did not know of the reasons behind the plan and had likely hoped the girl would drown. Or be eaten. Or both.

_But she had not been, had she?_ the handsome man thought as he smiled slightly.

It had not been explicitly stated, but after what he had learned later of the Cat's... _special skills,_ it was not difficult to guess that the elder meant to assess her _talent_ and resourcefulness without making her aware of the test. The handsome man still did not understand _why_ that was, though... Why was the knowledge of this skill unspoken? Why did the elder not discuss it with her? Why did he not seek to hone it? Why not further develop and harness her talent so that it could be employed for the good of the order? An assassin with the ability to know the thoughts of men without the need for them to be spoken aloud would certainly be a most _useful_ thing to have at the order's disposal. It almost seemed as if the _Kindly Man_ was glad the girl possessed her ability and wished her to use it but was perhaps... afraid to train her? _Why?_ Or was it simply an area which was beyond the principal elder's understanding and control? Was he not qualified to assist her in this way?

The handsome assassin shook his head, a silent admonishment for his own curiosity; a flaw in which he did not normally indulge. _Perhaps the little wolf is corrupting me,_ the master reasoned with a touch of mirth. He smirked then, thinking of how the girl had parroted back his words recently, and how she was growing more gleefully ruthless when they sparred and fought and traded barbs.

_We are corrupting each other,_ he amended then. He found that he did not mind the idea so much, but he knew his Lorathi brother would _hate_ it. _Perhaps that was part of the appeal._

Still, he banished his curious questions, knowing that if he needed the answers to them, they would be provided by the principal elder. Otherwise, he would do his duty and train the girl but he would not worry with things which were not his concern. He would leave _that_ for his Lorathi brother.

Of course, _Jaqen_ seemed to think _everything_ was his concern. How tiring it must be, to be so worried all the time; how _burdensome_ to be saddled with such a _noble_ sense of obligation. Such flawless judgment must be exhausting to maintain; it was really a wonder the man had the energy to dedicate to anything other than preserving his own perfection.

The handsome man wondered what attracted someone as chaotic and wild as the little wolf to the Lorathi; _he was so staid and so serious; all order and control._ Still, it had never seemed to bother their master, even when the two assassins were children, new to the ways of the order. The elder had always seemed to indulge the Lorathi's funereal demeanor. It was almost as if his brother thought that being a dealer of death implied a duty to adopt the attitude of a _mourner_. The handsome man speculated that perhaps it was his own naturally jovial and carefree manner which relegated him ever to second-place in the principal elder's eyes. _Never quite as good; never respected so entirely as the Lorathi._ Had he been naturally more melancholy, might his master have preferred _him_?

Once, when he was just a little boy, ragged and dirty and still desperate for some show of approval, he had run to his master with his three things. They were such _good_ things, too; information hard to come by; information he had risked much to gain; information assuredly of interest to the order. When he arrived at the temple, he found his Lorathi brother, solemn appearing, serious as ever, talking with their master. The master assassin was not a tall man, but even still, he knelt before the orphan boy on one knee, holding the acolyte's thin arms in his hands, looking him in his eye as they spoke. The scene was intimate; _tender,_ even. The handsome man, then only a beautiful stripling, imagined it was much like a scene that must be playing out in countless homes across the world. Loving fathers comforting their sons; teaching them; imparting some precious bit of wisdom to them. It was a scene that pierced the very heart of the lovely Myrish rogue, stinging him in some deep place.

_Jealousy._

Yet who could be jealous of the Lorathi? Slow to anger, circumspect, intelligent, loyal and brave. He was the very embodiment of a good son, a good friend, a good brother, and a good servant.

Though they were of an age, the Lorathi was every bit the older brother in their relationship. The beautiful Myrish boy had admired him and craved his friendship and attention, right from the start. Even with all that, though, there was a distinct _pride_ (and perhaps a touch of arrogance) and it kept the boy from trailing after his admired brother like an anxious pup. But how he longed to... If the Lorathi ever noticed and was irritated by it, he never made mention. _He wouldn't have, though, would he? His superiority did not allow for pique or a short temper. He was always far too occupied with being ideal to allow such mortal failings to show, wasn't he?_

It was not until the handsome man had seen the way the Westerosi girl had begun to look at his brother, though, the way she _compromised_ herself, doing what she knew she should not, and all for _Jaqen's_ sake ( _always for the Lorathi's sake, yes?_ ), that he finally allowed himself to examine fully the underpinnings of his own complex relationship with his brother. When he did, what he understood then was that warring emotions had _always_ defined his feelings toward the Lorathi who had been his closest friend, his true brother, and his greatest rival since nearly the beginning of his memory. The realization broke over him like a great wave and he felt drenched through to the bone with the knowledge, heavy and cold.

It was a recognition that he both loved and hated his brother in equal measure.

* * *

The Cat served her brothers, the masters and the elders at table for that midday meal. When the Bear sat down in his seat, she gave his shoulder a brief squeeze as she handed him his cup of wine. He took a sip and then glanced at her, obviously expecting lemon water or honeyed milk, but she thought the Lyseni could use a stronger drink after their morning discussion. The boy shrugged and then drained his goblet, holding it out for a refill. His sister obliged and then obliged him again. When he indicated his desire for a fourth cup, she hesitated but he gave her a sloppy smile and followed that up with imploring, puppy dog eyes and a ridiculously puckered lower lip and so she gave in, telling him that he might regret it later. The girl watched her brother's expression soften with the wine, his lids sinking a bit, dark blue eyes like dragonglass and half-hooded by the end of the meal.

The handsome man rose to leave the table but pulled the girl aside before he exited the small hall, telling her to go into the city and learn three new things.

"Take your brother," the master instructed her, pursing his lips and giving her a meaningful look. "He needs to walk it off."

"You should let him sleep it off," she muttered, watching as the Bear's head lolled slightly.

"And leave you to wander the city alone? Who knows what sort of trouble you would find?" the master replied with a small smirk.

"And so instead, you're sending me out with a drunken chaperone? That seems... _wise_."

"You'll be too busy tending to him to create much mischief."

"Why do I feel as if you are trying to get me out of the temple?" the girl inquired.

"Ha! Clever girl! You have it exactly."

The acolyte ignored the assassin's teasing tone and asked, "But... _why_?"

The handsome man snorted and shook his head, chastising her with his look. _Mind your business_ , he did not have to say, and she rolled her eyes at his mocking expression.

"Come and find me when you return," the master told her.

"I don't know how I'll endure the wait," she replied in sarcastic tones as the handsome man turned to leave. He made her no answer but merely looked back over his shoulder as he called to the Bear while he departed, behaving as if he had not even heard her, though it was plain that he did.

"Do not lose her," he told the large boy, and then he was gone.

"I'm trying," the boy muttered to no one, "but she won't cooperate."

Her brother, swaying slightly as he stood, took in the interaction of the master and acolyte despite the fact that his head felt as if it were stuffed with wool. His steps were heavy as he made his way toward the Cat. She could read his face as well as she had read the master assassin's and before the Lyseni could chastise her for her _dangerous impudence_ or her _reckless disrespect_ again, she stopped him with a word.

" _Don't_."

He halted very near her and gave a small, bitter sounding laugh, lifting his brows as he gazed at her, but he did not speak.

"Go to your cell," she directed him, not unkindly. "Lie down for a bit. I'll come get you when I finish here."

The boy gave her a mocking bow before he left her, but he did as she bid. The idea of putting his head on his pillow appealed to him just then, anyway. The Cat continued to serve those who remained at the meal and then a short time later, cleared the table, assisting Umma with the cleaning. After she finished up in the kitchen, she made her way to the acolyte's hallway and stopped in her own cell to change out of her black and white robe and into clothes more practical for her assigned task. Almost as an afterthought, she grabbed the hat she had used once to hide her face from the Rat's master when they played their game of Cat-and-mouse in the streets of Braavos not so very long ago. The girl placed the wide-brimmed hat on her head at a jaunty angle before leaving her cell and heading to that of her brother. She knocked lightly and then opened the door, finding her brother sprawled across his bed on his stomach, face turned toward her, snoring softly. One of his great arms dangled over the side of the mattress and she wanted to laugh at his haphazard appearance, but then recalled the time she had consumed too much wine and the urge died.

She tossed her hat on the empty bed once occupied by the Rat. Carefully, the girl sat on the edge of the Bear's bed and brushed his damp hair from his forehead. He stirred slightly at her touch and turned his head to face the opposite wall. His breathing quieted then and so the Cat was loathe to disturb him, for he had not been given much peace from his churning thoughts and torments in so long and in sleep, he looked to be finally settled and tranquil. She thought to defy the handsome man's order to take her brother with her and just go to some tavern or another by herself to learn her three things, but as she rose from the boy's side, she noted that he had not even taken off his boots when he fell abed. Sighing, the Cat leaned over and began to tug at them, thinking to make him more comfortable before she left. She had tugged one boot off and dropped it to the floor, turning to work on the second when the Lyseni's voice stopped her.

"Why are you undressing me, sister?"

The boy turned over and tucked his arms lazily behind his head, propping up slightly. The girl smiled at him, her look both fond and scolding at once, then returned to her task, removing the Bear's other boot.

"I thought to make you more comfortable. You seemed to be settled in for the night."

The large acolyte groaned slightly and threw one arm over his eyes, asking his sister why there were _two_ of her working on his boot. The Cat chuckled as she dropped remaining boot to the floor and told him the _four_ goblets of wine he imbibed during the midday meal probably had something to do with it.

"I blame you," the Bear said weakly.

"I'll accept the blame for the first goblet. The rest are your own fault," the girl chided. "Who knew you couldn't hold your wine?"

"I _am_ holding it," he protested, placing a hand over his hard belly and patting it lightly. "It's just making me feel... strange."

"We're supposed to be going on some useless exercise, but I'm not so sure you can walk."

"Not without my boots, anyway," he agreed with a chuckle, words soft around the edges but not fully slurred. He quirked an eyebrow up and wiggled his stocking clad toes at her.

The Cat shook her head vigorously, saying, "I just did all that work to get them off. I'm not putting them back on."

"So you like me better undressed, eh sweetling?"

"Sweetling?" the girl snorted. "You really _are_ drunk!"

"Don't try to change the subject, sister. If I had not woken up to defend my honor, what would you have done next?" he teased. "Were you going to remove my stockings?"

The mischievous girl grinned and then employed all of her feline grace as she stretched and slunk along the side of the Bear's bed until she was leaning over him and had somehow caged the large boy within the prison of her arms without raising any alarm in him. She dipped her head low until her mouth was next to his ear and she breathed her reply in a husky voice.

"Oh, yes, brother. I'm all atremble at the thought of your _naked toes_."

Without warning and with surprising speed for someone in his state, the Lyseni's arms shot up and wrapped around his sister's middle, slinging her body over his as she yelped in surprise. He threw her to his other side and rolled with her as he did, trapping _her_ beneath him then, within the cage of _his_ arms.

"The toes are nothing," he snickered. "I have other parts that would make you fairly swoon. You should see my _elbows._ "

After a beat, they both burst out laughing and the Bear carefully moved to the girl's side and dropped back to the mattress, snuggling next to her. If he weren't so giant, she could almost imagine he was a younger brother, seeking solace from his older sister after waking from a nightmare. The Lyseni was nearly two years her senior, however, and much larger than any of her brothers would have ever been like to grow.

"Are you alright?" she asked him.

"I'm..." the boy started, and then paused, shaking his head. "I don't really know how to answer that."

She did not protest when the boy folded her into his arms and held her close. She slipped her hands up toward his head and began stroking his hair in a way she recalled her lady mother had done for her the few times the girl had ever taken to a sick bed. It had always comforted her, and she hoped it would do the same for her brother. The boy took in a slow, deep breath and released it, seeming to relax into her touch as he did.

"I'll not leave you," she promised. "Not as long as it's within my power to stay."

"You would not need to," he murmured, closing his eyes.

"What? What do you mean?"

"I will go with you," he said, sliding warm fingers over her hand at his temple. The girl pulled back from the boy's embrace enough that she could study his face, not understanding.

"You would go _with_ me? _Where,_ brother?"

"Anywhere," he replied, his eyes still closed, his fingers weaving into hers, still trapped at his temple.

"Do you mean that you want me to run away from the temple, and that you would run away with me?" the Cat asked carefully. The boy's eyes opened slowly, still bleary with drink as they tried to focus on her face.

"Yes," he answered simply, watching her, looking for signs of agreement with his plan.

The girl's brow furrowed slightly and she pulled her lower lip between her teeth. The Bear snorted at the expression.

"What?" she demanded.

"I didn't think it was so complex a problem that it would lead to wrinkled foreheads and chewed lips," he told her, smiling as he moved his fingers from hers and instead used them to trace the line of her abused bottom lip with the calloused pads.

"Oh, this solution seems simple to you, does it?" the Cat snapped. Her tone caused the smile to die on his lips.

"Well, I had thought..."

"Did you?" she interrupted. "Did you _think_? Did you consider how it would be to live the rest of your days running from an order of ruthless assassins? You should not forget the things of which those among the order are capable!"

The boy was taken aback by her harshness.

"After almost ten years of training, I think I understand very well what the dangers are, sister," the Bear replied, his tone haughty as he reminded her that his sojourn in the temple had far exceeded her own. He then added with a hiss, " _And_ I _certainly do not need reminding of the sorts of things the order is capable of carrying out_."

The Lyseni's words chastened his sister and she softened her tone as she tried to explain to him why they could not do what he was suggesting.

"We, _both_ of us, have worked so hard and so long for this," the Cat began, bending one elbow to brace her hand as she used it to prop up her head. Her other hand began to move again in the boy's dark hair, running over the close-cropped side slowly before cupping the base of his skull and scratching lightly there as he looked up at her with dark eyes. "I would not ask you to leave this behind and risk your life in some... _misguided_ effort to protect me."

The boy's face began to crumple a little but he stopped himself; he _ruled his face_ and slipped one great hand over the girl's hip, moving it to the dip of her waist and grasping her there, thumb pressed into her belly as his fingers clutched at her flank.

"Sister," he started, his voice betraying the emotion his face did not, "you are all I have left in this world. What sort of brother... or... _friend_ would... I cannot stand idly by and _let_ you..."

"I won't leave Jaqen," she whispered into the quiet left by his halting speech. The Bear sighed deeply and rolled onto his back, forcing her to withdraw her hand from his hair and staring up at the ceiling.

"Cat, you won't have a choice," he told her with sad certainty.

"What do you..."

"You cannot really believe that they would let you _keep_ him."

"They cannot stop me!" she declared.

The boy's laughter was harsh and barking, sounding almost more like a pained cough.

"How can you be so frighteningly savage and so preposterously naïve all at once?" he spat.

"Bear, I _love_ him. You, of all people... You _know_ what that means. I begged you to leave..." the girl hesitated to say Olive's name, not wishing to inflict unnecessary pain upon her brother. She continued softly, "You _know_ what it is to need someone. You know how difficult... how _impossible_ it can be to leave."

"And I know the consequences of not doing so as well," he reminded her with heavy bitterness.

"They will not kill him," she whispered.

"He is valuable to them, so maybe not, but do you really believe they would think twice about killing _you_?" the Bear countered, rolling suddenly to his side, propping his head up so that he mimicked his sister's posture. They were face to face then, so he was able to watch as her features rearranged themselves then and her face changed from worried to serene.

" _Valar morghulis,_ " the Cat replied with a slight shrug.

The flippant utterance at first stung but then enraged the Bear. He had lost one woman he loved and he would not consent to lose another, even if she _did_ seem determined to commit suicide. He pushed her harshly, forcing her back into the mattress as he loomed over her, grabbing her by her shoulders and shaking her, his voice caught somewhere between a roar and a wail.

" _How can you say that? How can you say that to me? You said I would not lose you! In the training room just this morning, you said... you said..._ "

His words were drowned by his choking sobs then but he continued to grasp her shoulders so hard that she knew she would likely bear the bruises by the time she returned to her own chamber that night. The girl made small shushing noises in an attempt to quiet the boy but she was barely heard over the sound of his own anguish. Because of the way he had her pinned, she could not reach his face or his hair, but she lifted her hands and grasped him gently on either side of his waist, running her fingers slowly up and down his sides. The movement had the effect of calming him and he loosened his iron grip on her shoulders, dropping his face into the crook of her neck. He was still shaking with sobs, his rending breaths tearing at her heart. She felt his tears warm and wet on her skin, accusing her of callousness; carelessness; selfishness. She pushed the guilt aside and tried to mollify her friend who was hurting.

"Worry is not for us, brother," the Cat murmured.

She felt the boy stiffen then and he wrenched his face away from her angrily, pushing himself up until he was sitting on the edge of his bed, his back turned to her. He slumped heavily and blew out a long, shaky breath, raking his fingers through his blonde hair.

"Why do you have to be so _fucking Faceless_?" the Bear seethed, refusing to look at her.

The girl's mouth flew open.

The Cat had certainly heard more profane language than that in her life. Walking along the docks on any given day and listening to sailors speaking to one another had gifted her with a vocabulary vulgar enough to rival the Greatjon, and in several languages, too, so it was not that her ears were so tender she could not bear to have them assaulted in such a manner. It was just that she had never heard such things from her _brother's_ mouth, and certainly not when he was addressing _her._ He was normally so _affable,_ so _tolerant_ of her, so slow to anger and difficult to ruffle. As he rose and moved to the bed across from his, putting some distance between himself and his sister, she could see his face as he turned to sit. His eyes were no longer hooded and bleary. He looked halfway to madness, eyes wide, staring but not seeing.

In truth, he _was_ seeing, it was just that the face he saw did not belong to anyone in his cell. Glittering eyes, open but unfocused; the eyes of a corpse that had once been a woman he had loved; that he _still_ loved. _Worry is not for her,_ he thought, _for she cannot feel its bite any longer. For us, though..._

The Bear regained his focus and stared at his sister, trying to imagine the color leaving her lips, her eyes losing their light, the warmth seeping from her skin along with her blood. She looked at him even as he looked at her and she could read in his face his desire. His want of her to be... _something._ His insistence that she _not_ be... something _else;_ his silent plea for her to relinquish that which she had striven for these last four years, to abandon what she had become and to sacrifice the place and the _meaning_ that she had found here. She knew that he wanted her to leave the order in a bid for self-preservation and flee some threat that she could not see; a threat she did not feel. But he thought that she did not need to feel it, for the boy felt it sharply and surely enough for the both of them. With an agony that had been branded deep on the inside of him with the loss of Olive, he felt _everything,_ perils both real and imagined. Her face cracked then, the expression of bland serenity borrowed from the Kindly Man falling away completely as she allowed her feelings for her brother, her pity, to show upon her countenance. He saw the change in her expression and he sneered at it. At _her._

_Pity._

"Do not look at me that way," he commanded acidly.

It was not what he wanted. Her pity was useless to him. He wanted her _fear_ , so that she would listen and be chastened; so that she would see the wisdom in his words. He wanted her desperation so that she would do what _must_ be done. _And he wanted her fucking trust._ Had he not earned that much at least? He wanted to be enough for her; for his care and concern to move her and to _be enough_.

He wanted to _save her._

He had actually believed that his offer to go _with_ her would be sufficient enticement, fool that he was! How could she refuse? It was such a great sacrifice, giving up what he had rightfully earned through hard toil and grief; giving up a life of relative comfort for a life of running and hiding _._ But he was willing; he would have done it, _would do it,_ for her. To spare her pain. To keep her safe.

Even the Lorathi had not offered her that.

And yet, there she sat on his bed, looking across at him, shaking her head, refusing to see reason; refusing to let him care for her; making a mockery of Olive's death and damning him in the process.

"How can you do this to me?" the Bear asked, dropping his eyes to the floor. "Are you really so _selfish_?"

"Selfish?"

"Yes! Selfish! You want to be Faceless so badly that you do not care who it hurts. When you fail in your bid and they _kill_ you, it will not be _you_ who suffers. And even if you succeed, what they will make you do for it will destroy you and..."

"So, _you're_ good enough to enter the order, but not me..."

"I haven't entered the order yet, sister. And I've said I will go with you."

The Cat left her place on the bed and her brother rose to meet her. They stood facing each other in silence for a moment before she spoke again. She wanted him to abandon this mad plan. She needed to make her brother understand she had no intention of running away.

"It makes no difference to me whether you leave or stay, brother. I cannot go. I _will not_ go. I have made my life here and I plan to serve the order until the day I die."

"It seems you've been blessed with a sudden clarity about your path, sister," he growled. "When did you arrive at this decision?"

"It's what I've always wanted," she sniffed.

"Truly? Who can tell? Who can say what you have _always wanted,_ when what you want changes by the day?" he retorted. "To be an assassin; to be a wildling; to be a water dancer; to be the daughter of Eddard Stark; to be the paramour of Jaqen H'ghar. I confess, I can no longer keep up."

"I am all of those things," the Cat assured him, her temper growing shorter at his mocking tone, "and more besides. But I can _be_ all of them _here,_ with you. And with Jaqen. If I run, then I am _nothing,_ and I would have _nothing._ "

"You are wrong, sister. If you stay, you can be _no one_ and if you try to be more, it is then that you would be left with _nothing,_ not even your life," the Bear told her, his voice plaintive. He tried to channel all of his desire for her to understand into his tone. "If you run, then at least you would be safe, and you would have _me._ "

The girl grew frustrated with her brother's inability to understand her position. It was as if he did not see that leaving would destroy her. It was as if he did not care.

"I will be a Faceless Man," she told the Bear resolutely, her voice growing harder as she spoke. "Let us discuss it no further."

"You are a cold woman," he spat, glowering at her, "to be so unmoved by my pleas _._ Perhaps I was wrong; they will not break you. You are too well-suited to this life. You are the _very_ _image_ of Facelessness. If you must kill _me_ to earn your face, sister, I would ask that you do the thing quickly, so that I will not suffer, though I do not hold out much hope for it. You love your cruelty too much."

His resentful, drunken words excoriated her; seared her from the inside outward. She was nearly blinded by her hurt and her anger then and so she spoke without thinking, for if she had only stopped a moment to consider the place from which his anger was coming, she would have guarded her tongue better; she would have ruled her intentions.

"You think me cold, brother? You think me cruel? Do you truly believe that I am the only one in this cell well-suited for Facelessness?" the Cat bit out. "What outrageous hypocrisy! _You_ have the audacity to admonish _me_? _You're the one who murdered the woman you claimed to love_!"

The blow was nearly instant, and it was stinging, the backside of the Lyseni's hand opening her lip and sending her sprawling backwards onto her brother's bed. The only sounds she heard then were the pounding of her heart in her own ears and her brother's heavy, rapid breathing through his nose. She could see the large boy shaking with his fury, his jaw clenched and his eyes wild with his hurt and his animus. She had _never_ seen her brother in such state; had rarely seen _anyone_ in a state to compare to it. The girl's own words came back to her and it was only then that she understood what she had said; how she had _pierced_ him. She wanted to apologize then, but was so stunned and angry that he had struck her that she could not call the words up to make it right. _How could he have hit her?_ The Bear, for his part, was feeling a congruous regret; had not even understood that he _had_ hit her until he saw her lying there, her lip bleeding, staring up at him with wide, grey eyes. He took a step toward her, his face showing his shock and anguish. He wanted to grab her up and tell her how sorry he was, how he did not mean it, would never want to hurt her, but he was pinned in place by the roiling pain in his gut and the crushing sensation in his chest as her words echoed in his mind. _How could she have said those things?_

The two acolytes remained staring at one another in unblinking silence until slowly, the Cat stood and straightened her tunic. She lifted her fingers to her aching cheek and mouth, gingerly touching the wet spot on her lip. She drew her fingers back and studied the red stain there. The movement seemed to awaken something in the Lyseni and then he moved to her, gently holding her arms, whispering over and over that he was sorry; _so, so sorry._ His voice was hoarse, choked with tears, but he kept saying it, over and over and over, unable to stop the words from tumbling over his lips.

"I'm so sorry, sister. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please... I'm sorry, Cat. Please, Cat, I'm sorry."

And then she was saying it, too, and reaching for his tear-stained face to cup his cheek. They were both so full of regret, and meant what they were saying, and yet still held onto a small sliver of resentment; she because she felt as if a tiny piece of her had died when he slapped her face and knocked her down; he because she had said the worst thing she could have possibly said to him in that instant, and she _knew_ it was the worst thing, and still said it anyway. Their friendship remained, but could not be the same. It had changed in the space of a moment and there would always be a part of themselves that remained forever wary of the other, each knowing now of what the other was truly capable.

* * *

In the end, they went out into Braavos, as they had been bid, the Lyseni escorting his sister who wore her wide-brimmed Myrish sailor's hat to obscure her face. She still took pains not to be recognized along the docks, just in case some astute Westerosi sailor was familiar with _the Stark look._ However, if pressed, she would have to admit that she had not always been as careful as her masters might have liked in the past.

"Can't we just stay here and sleep?" the large boy had asked as he made her turn her back so that he could slip out of his acolyte's robe and slip into his breeches without her eyes upon him. "You could practice lying and just make up three things."

"Obedience is a choice."

They both froze for a second, her knowing that her use of the Kindly Man's words irked her brother acutely and him trying to brush them off without reacting in a way that would hurt her. Instead, he responded in a way that surprised her.

"What of love?" he asked softly, slipping a blouse over his head and tightening the laces at his throat. "Is love a choice?"

"No," the girl responded without hesitation, shaking her head. "Love is _weakness_."

"Just so," the Bear whispered, and he did not think his sister fully understood how true her words were.

They slipped in and out of the worst of the winesinks around Ragman's, listening in on the conversations of drunk patrons, greeting sailors and whores as they moved between taverns and inns. They actually discovered news of interest in this way, as several ships recently returned from Westeros seemed to bring word of dragons in Dorne, and rumored alliances between the Dornish and the last of the Targaryens. Much of this was already known by the Cat, thanks to her master's own recent trip to reconnoiter the lands which now sheltered the dragons, but the confirmation made plain that the silver queen and her silver nephew were no longer shy about trumpeting their intentions.

It was to be war, then.

_More war,_ the Cat amended in her head.

The two acolytes moved along the water's edge until they found themselves in the Armorers District, the afternoon crowds thinner as men finished up their business for the day and made their way from the shops towards homes and ships and inns. It was there that they learned a large order for arms had been placed by the Sealord; half a hundred fine _Bravos_ blades, though the reason for it remained a mystery. The Bear and the Cat continued down the lane which bordered the Long Canal and without discussing it, they both made to cross the familiar bridge that would lead them along the street toward the inn the girl had recently called her home. Upon entering the inn, the pair learned that Staaviros had a brother, and this brother had inherited the inn after Staaviros had gone mad with jealousy and killed himself, but not before he had murdered his lover, a comely tavern girl, after he had caught her abed with his errand boy.

The Bear's face was a stony mask but after overhearing perhaps three separate versions of the event, he turned briskly and strode from the inn, bursting through the doors and into the street. The girl had to run to keep up with his long strides as he moved blindly along the lane, heedless of her calls for him to slow down, to wait for her, heading in the direction of the Purple Harbor. When his sister finally caught him from behind, grabbing his elbow, the large boy spun on her abruptly, causing her to involuntarily flinch. His face fell then and he reached out to gently stroke her injured cheek, apologizing once again.

"I can never say enough how sorry I am," he told her, angry with himself for making her flinch; angry with her a little for it, too. For _reminding_ him.

"I know," she told him, and thinking on what they had just heard in the inn, she added, "Neither can I. I should have never said... what I said."

"You and I do not agree about your decision to stay..."

"Clearly," the Cat laughed slightly.

"But I hope you know that my position is only guided by my concern for you."

"I do know that, brother. I really do."

She embraced him there in the street and he did not protest, but dropped his chin to the top of her head, pulling her in close to him briefly, and then released her. He had only held her long enough for a Lorathi assassin to see them from the docks and take note of the tenderness between them.

The acolytes began their journey home, walking at a brisk pace, racing the sunset so that they would not run the risk of tangling with any stupid _Bravos_. They did not wear swords at their hips, but occasionally, the arrogant swordsmen were known to offer a blade to someone they thought looked particularly game to fight and if the Cat knew one thing about herself, it was that she was _always_ game to fight. But, she was also hungry and did not wish to miss the supper (especially since she was not due to serve it), even to teach a puffed-up _Bravo_ a lesson. Sitting and enjoying a meal sounded like a fine prospect just then; finer, even, than water dancing in the streets of Braavos.

The girl suddenly increased her pace without warning, leaving her brother behind.

"Cat, why are you running?" the Bear called after her.

"The question is," she called back over her shoulder as she quickened her pace to a sprint, "why aren't _you_?"

The boy chortled and then ran after his sister, his long legs catching up to her quickly. He grabbed her from behind, sweeping her off of her feet as she squealed and then laughed. He threw her over his shoulder but she wiggled free and then was riding his back, her arms wrapped loosely around his neck and his arms looped under her knees.

"I've ridden many horses in my day," she told him, "but no bears."

"An appalling oversight, sister."

"Perhaps, but it just seems rather _indecorous_."

"Then it should suit you rather well, don't you think?"

She snorted and playfully punched his arm. Anyone watching would think they looked like two overgrown children at play. In a way, they were, but there was an underlying layer of tension to their interaction; a desperation for things to be alright once again; to put distance between themselves and the ugly things that had occurred between them.

"Horses are faster, though," she complained. "I don't want to miss out on the stuffed fish and at the pace you're setting, we'll miss supper entirely and be forced to eat stale bread."

"It's _indecorous_ of you to be so ungrateful," the boy scolded her jokingly. "I only carry _true_ friends around on my back. You should be conscious of the great honor I do you!"

The Cat laughed, saying, "Yes. I can just see you cavorting around Braavos with the Rat riding on your shoulders. What a pretty picture that would make!"

"Why are you so mean to me?" the Bear groused.

"Why are you so easy to rile?" his sister countered, bending to place a fond kiss upon his cheek. "Now, hurry. I can hear the warm bread calling my name from here."

The girl needn't have worried. They arrived at the temple in plenty of time to wash their faces and hands, change into robes, and attend the supper. They walked together to the small hall and the boy proceeded through the door just ahead of her. She was set to follow him in but then saw the handsome man loitering just outside. In response to the look he gave her, the girl stepped aside to allow the others to filter past them as the master spoke to her.

"Ah, little wolf, I see you have returned safely from your outing. I _am_ pleased."

The girl rolled her eyes.

"What did you learn, aside from the skill of bear-riding?" he asked.

The acolyte felt her cheeks burn with embarrassment. She hadn't realized that anyone had seem them arrive, but then thought that it should not have surprised her in the least. _Nothing she did seemed to go unnoticed these days._

"I learned that Dorne has aligned itself with dragons."

"Hardly surprising to anyone who knows their history. What else?"

"I learned that the Sealord has bought enough fine steel to arm a small company of men, and that those men are like to all be water dancers."

"Ah, now _that_ would be a sight to behold on the battlefield."

At the handsome man's remark, the girl tried to envision such a force and had to admit that he was right; it _would_ be a fine sight to behold.

"Why did you send me out in the first place?" she inquired casually, hoping she could catch him in an unguarded moment. Despite his undeniable mastery of Facelessness and his dedication to the order, the handsome man was the one person in the temple besides Jaqen who could be relied upon to tell her the things that others would not.

Sometimes.

This time, however, the assassin merely smirked at her, telling her that she still owed him one more thing. As another young acolyte and the waif passed by them with a nod and entered the small hall, the Cat wondered if the handsome man was thinking of the thing she had asked him just then. Would this be the best time to try to discover it for herself? Through her... _less direct means_?

Trying to concentrate without giving the appearance of concentrating, the girl smiled up at the master and nodded, saying, "Yes, one more thing," seemingly admitting defeat as she lightly reached into his head.

... _and Tyto would have been likely aware already but she will need to understand the..._

It was not the first time the handsome man had been thinking that name as she pilfered his thoughts.

"Who _is_ Tyto?" the girl demanded of the master in a low voice. Before he could reply, the apprentice felt a powerful hand gripping her shoulder and turned her head to see that it belonged to the Kindly Man.

"Valar morghulis, child," he said looming over her, but he was looking directly at the handsome assassin rather than at her as he spoke. After a pause, he said, " _Brother._ "

Both the Cat and the master returned the greeting and then a heavy silence descended over the three before the principal elder spoke again.

"We do not speak that name within these walls," he said sourly, giving her a hard look before he turned his piercing eyes upon her handsome master's face. "Where did you even hear it?"

"I..." the Cat started, looking helplessly between the two men, wondering what she should say.

"She heard it from me," the younger assassin replied evenly, his look unreadable. The Kindly Man's mouth pressed itself into a tight line briefly before he spoke. He kept his disturbing gaze upon the master assassin but he asked a question of the Cat.

"What is the oldest lesson that you have learned within these walls, child?"

The acolyte hesitated only briefly before she answered, "Rule your face. Rule your thoughts. Rule your intentions." She tried to sound confident and not the least bit cowed, but she felt the tension growing thick around her and it had the effect of making her words shakier than she liked.

"Just so," the Kindly Man said slowly, his unblinking gaze trained on the handsome man, accusation radiating from the blue eyes. "Rule your _thoughts._ Rule your _intentions_."

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask _why_ they should not speak this name, but the ice in the elder's voice stopped her and she thought to herself that he had never looked less _kindly_ than he did at that moment, gripping her shoulder, his usually placid face as close to frowning as she had ever seen, staring hard into the handsome man's eyes. There was a warning that the handsome man seemed to take and he nodded slightly in acknowledgment of what the elder had said. After that, they entered the hall together, nearly the last of the diners to take their seats. Once again, the handsome man sat next to her rather than claiming his usual spot nearer the head of the table.

_Probably to torture me for getting him into trouble,_ she thought bitterly.

The Bear was arranged directly across the table and Loric was seated diagonally across from the Cat, nearer the lower end of the table with his brothers. He gave the girl a small wave as she sat and she smiled back at him. He noted her wound and reasoned that she must have obtained it somehow between the midday meal and the supper, since her lip had been perfectly intact when last he saw her.

"What happened?" Loric asked, pointing to his lip and then to hers.

"Maybe a drunken sailor caught me listening to his conversation," she japed, repeating his words from a few weeks back when he had sported a similar wound. It had been just before the Cat took Mattine's face, as he recalled.

"Very funny," the boy said goodnaturedly. "As if _you_ would ever be caught by a stupid sailor, drunk or not."

"True," the girl agreed, nodding. "A lesson you could put to use, young man. What did you learn from him, anyway? Something worth the injury, I hope!"

Loric stuck his tongue out at her and she laughed, but then he cast his eyes upward toward the ceiling, looking to his left as he seemed to be trying to call up the memory.

"It's been awhile," he murmured. "I've learned so many more things since then..."

"Don't tax yourself," the Cat told him. "I was just curious."

"A character flaw I have tried unsuccessfully to tear from you," the handsome man softly murmured in her ear as Jaqen entered the hall. She did not see her master, as her back was to the door, but she could feel him there. After a moment, the Lorathi rounded the table and took his customary place. The girl was caught between feeling elated at seeing him and feeling inexplicably guilty that she had been caught (again) whispering with the handsome man. Though the words were a sort of mirthful chastisement, the posture was intimate and she could feel her skin burn and the pace of her heart quicken as her master's bronze eyes slid to her face. He gave a barely perceptible nod, though whether it was meant for her or the handsome assassin, she could not say.

"Aha!" the little Myrish boy cried out, drawing the attention of the younger acolytes sitting near him. "I have it now!" He turned his gaze to the Cat and grinned widely. The girl raised her eyebrows expectantly, indulging him. It provided her a distraction from the sudden heaviness in the pit of her stomach.

"Well?" the girl encouraged gently.

"He thought I was trying to steal information so I could make a claim on his reward. He must have been very drunk to think someone as young as me would set out across the Narrow Sea on his own in search of a reward, though."

"What reward? What are you talking about, Loric?" the Cat asked, confused.

"That sailor told some girl in his lap that a Northern lady was roaming the docks and she was going to win him a purse of dragons, but I wouldn't even know _which_ highborn girl it was that the Westerosi queen was interested in, so he certainly didn't need to _hit_ me over it! I was just trying to learn three new things!"

Silence swept over the table swiftly. Those at the head turned to look at the young acolyte and those at the lower end grew quiet under the sudden scrutiny. Jaqen's eyes flicked between the Kindly Man and his apprentice, but the movement was quick and his expression was neutral, so the Cat could not read it. There was a question on her face as she looked toward her master but he only shook his head at her very slightly and so she turned to watch the principal elder. His sour expression had returned and the girl wondered when was the last time he had been so out of sorts. It seemed that multiple acolytes were bent on displeasing him today.

"Child," the elder said, addressing Loric, "today you had lessons in potions, did you not?"

"Yes, master," the boy chirped happily, seemingly oblivious to his offense.

"Perhaps you would regale your brothers with your newfound knowledge?"

And with that, Loric was off, chatting with his fellows about his trials and tribulations with perfecting Sweetsleep. Slowly, conversation returned and there was a steady murmur at the table with occasional snatches of laughter. The Cat remained tense, however, and though he was better at hiding it, it seemed that Jaqen did, too. His face was still, and he did not converse much with those around him, though he nodded politely when required.

"Look at him," the handsome man scoffed in a low tone that only the girl could hear. "So serious."

"Perhaps you should follow his lead," she retorted distractedly, her mind on sailors and queens and highborn girls.

"If I were to follow his lead, I have a strong sense it would bring me to your bed, little wolf."

That certainly caught her full attention. She let out a small gasp then, but recovered quickly.

"In Westeros, those words would earn you a duel for besmirching my honor. I'm more than happy to act as my own champion if you like."

The master assassin snorted at her, telling her to calm herself.

"I was not slighting your honor, _my lady_. It was merely a jape. Does your master never jape?"

The girl thought back to the many times Jaqen had teased her; how his japing had alternately amused and infuriated her; how it sometimes led to blushes so intense she felt as if she glowed with them and how sometimes, as with his tickling her ear with the end of her own braid, they led to... _other things._

"He is serious when the situation calls for it. He is also capable of humor. It is necessary to have _balance_ in these things," the Cat told the handsome man, sounding suspiciously as if she were _lecturing_ him. "Mastery of such balance makes him a... less _simple_ creature than some I know."

"Oh ho!" the master laughed with delight, loud enough to draw Jaqen's eye. The handsome man gave his brother a wicked grin across the table and then inclined his head toward the girl, murmuring in a scornful tone, "Spoken like a girl in love."

The girl colored at bit at the words but shot back in a quiet hiss, "You do not know him like I do!"

"Oh? Hmmm. No, I suppose I don't know him like _you_ do, though perhaps after living most of our lives under the same roof, I know him just a bit better. And I am not quite so blind to his faults as you seem to be."

"His faults?" the girl queried with a small laugh. "He has none."

The assassin chuckled, but there was no mirth behind it.

"Rule your _thoughts_ ," she needled him. "Rule your _intentions,_ master. You're letting your hatred show. It's not very _Faceless_ of you." Here, she shook her head slightly, like a septa scolding a pupil who could not curtsy properly.

"Hatred? You mistake me, my girl."

"Jealousy, then?"

The master laughed again, saying, "I cannot be jealous of the Lorathi. He is my _brother._ I do worry for him, though, even if he cannot be bothered to worry for himself."

The girl's breath caught painfully in her chest. She swallowed and asked softly, "Why do you worry?"

"Because, little wolf, an assassin who cannot follow orders is of little use to his master," the handsome man replied very seriously, his eyes pinning her in her place. "And an assassin who has lost his sense of self-preservation will not long be among us."

Tendrils of cold crawled into her breast and wrapped themselves around her heart, bleeding into her belly and freezing her gut slowly; painfully.

"Not lost," she whispered, more to herself than to her handsome master. "He never _lost_ it. _Sacrificed,_ maybe."

The assassin regarded her for a moment and then replied, "Just so."

The girl pushed her plate away, food untouched, her appetite gone. She heard the handsome master cluck his tongue at her as he pushed the plate back to its place.

"No more missed meals. You will have need of your strength."

She nodded woodenly and began to eat without tasting, the Bear scrutinizing her from across the table, wondering what his sister had discussed with the handsome man so secretively and what the master had said to her that had caused her to become so pale. She passed the rest of the supper in silence until the others, declaring themselves alternately sated and tired, began to leave the hall.

Just as the girl was rising from her place, she felt Jaqen's eyes upon her and she let her gaze drift to him. He was relaxed in his chair, leaning back and tapping at one spot on his bottom lip with his finger, his eyes slightly narrowed. As she left the hall, she had a feeling that Jaqen would be quizzing her on her wound soon. And she would be quizzing him on... _many things._

* * *

_**Your Decision—**_ Alice in Chains

_**Times Like These—**_ Foo Fighters (I'm a brand new sky to hang the stars upon tonight)

_**Far Behind—**_ Candlebox (Bear and Arya fight)

_**Schism—**_ Tool

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope GRRM doesn't sue me for using his characters—it's all out of love, George! A few references you may (or may not) find helpful: Jaqen's section is his POV from chapter 1. The conversation between Loric and the Cat references a tidbit found in chapter 25. 
> 
> I hope no one was bothered by the fact that I did not put a violence warning on this chapter. I had said a while back that I would not label chapters with warnings (mostly due to the nature of the source material—anyone in this fandom should expect those sorts of things), and the only reason there is the exception up top is that the story is rated "T" and I felt like a bit of the Bear's language in this chapter was a deviation from that rating, so I didn't want to catch anyone off-guard with that.
> 
> Thank you, as ever, for reading and reviewing. I appreciate your comments and encouragements as well as your continued attention.


	55. Chapter 55

_But if you loved me, why'd you leave me?_

* * *

She did not often consent to sleep under the hill, preferring to spend the night hours hunting in the surrounding wilderness with her pack. Tonight was different, though. She had felt a pull to stay close to the dark knight's side, though the others in his pack did not seem overly pleased with the arrangement. They were becoming more tolerant of her presence and feared her less than before, but they were still wary. The horses, however, had not grown used to her and still bucked and screamed when she came too near. _Perhaps the horses were smarter than the men they carried on their backs._ She was still a fearsome creature, and she sat docilely by the towering man's side only by her own consent, her ears pricked, listening. _Ever listening._

"It is not easy to know how this will affect the small folk," Harwin was saying. "If the tales are true, though, is hard to imagine Jon Snow having any wicked intent. I knew him as a boy, and bastard or not, he always carried his father's honor as well as any true born son."

_Jon Snow. They were speaking of her brother,_ the girl thought. The wolf thought of her own brother, the one with fur as snowy white as his master's name. She whined and pressed her side closer to the dark knight's thigh and he dropped his hand into her fur, beginning to scratch her behind her ears.

"Wildlings do not have the Stark honor, though," the Kingslayer objected, and when he said _Stark honor,_ his voice betrayed the distinct sound of sneering. "And if they are headed south, we will soon enough meet them and know their intent. As for Jon Snow, who can even say if he is truly alive or if this is just some overblown rumor?"

"I do not think they will head south," the Northman replied. "As for Jon Snow, though... after all we have seen, I would not doubt any claims that he lives."

A pretty youth shook his head, seemingly having trouble with the idea, muttering, "I saw him bleeding upon the snow."

"Wouldn't be the first time a man survived battle wounds," a weathered man with a tangled beard grunted.

_I know him,_ the girl thought, her wolf eyes studying the bearded man. A vague memory of distant songs played in her head. Forest lasses and acorns and a harp. _Tom. Tom O'Sevens._

"Wouldn't be the first time a man was dead and then walked again, either," the ragged red priest spoke up from the shadows on the far edge of the space. "Stannis' Red priestess had a hand in this. I can feel it."

_A Red priestess? Yes, that made sense. That_ had _to be it..._ Her bones had not lied to her. Jon may have died at the hands of his so-called brothers, but he had been brought back by the same magic or power that had saved Beric Dondarrion over and over again; the power that animated her mother now. _Jon was alive; there was no doubt in her mind._

"He may mean to seek revenge against Castle Black and the traitors that remain there," a pretty youth mused. "And we should be there to help him. It's why I came to you in the first place."

"You came to us bound and blindfolded, as a prisoner," the Kingslayer reminded him.

The pretty boy bristled, retorting, "Aye. And in return for my service, the lady promised me aid in my quest. I've yet to see it, though."

"She does things in her own time, boy," Thoros growled, but in truth, he sounded more tired than offended. "And in her own way."

"Her way is to kill Freys and Lannisters, and there are few enough of those left," the boy spat. "It is time to move! If Lord Commander Snow means to seek justice, we should provide him our aid!"

"Attacking his brothers at Castle Black? Does that sound like the Jon Snow you know, Satin?" Harwin asked the pretty youth.

The boy considered the question and then admitted, "No, it does not. Though there is perhaps no man braver..."

The Kingslayer snorted and the youth glared at him.

"Ser, when _you_ see a man face down flesh-eating Thenns carving their way through your rear defenses and still keep steady enough to turn back mammoths and giants and a hundred thousand wildlings at your front gate before walking out among them _alone and unarmed_ to secure the safety of your brothers, perhaps you will then understand what sort of courage I speak of," the boy seethed coldly.

"And if those hundred thousand wildlings were such a threat, then how is it _Lord Snow_ finds himself in command of them now?" the Kingslayer inquired lazily, clearly dubious of the validity of the boy's claims.

"Because, Kingslayer, that is what real leaders do. They inspire admiration and loyalty in men, turning enemies into friends. I don't expect you to understand that, though. You seem much better at turning friends into enemies."

"You speak pretty for a crow," the Kingslayer told him. "Did you learn that in the brothel?"

Gendry, who had been quiet up until that point, his hand absently stroking the direwolf's back as he listened to the council, sprang into action, stopping the pretty boy from flying at the Kingslayer just then. _One handed or not, the golden knight was still a formidable opponent and the boy was not like to leave such a tangle unscathed. Or, alive._

"All of us have pasts, Ser Jaime," Gendry reminded him evenly, restraining the former man of the Night's Watch, "some less auspicious than others. Yet here we all are, together, serving a common purpose."

The golden lion bowed mockingly to the dark knight, saying, "I am in awe of your new-found wisdom, Ser Bastard. I shall remember it the next time you call me _Kingslayer."_

The knightly woman at the Kingslayer's side reached out her large hand and placed it gently on the golden knight's shoulder, the softness of the gesture at odds with her serious expression and her immense stature. The touch seemed to calm the man, though, and the wolf could practically taste the tension easing out of him. She spoke to him in low tones, saying something in his ear that only he could hear. He gave the woman a small nod and then cleared his throat.

"My apologies, _Satin_ ," the lion said, chastened, as he gave the crow a small salute with his golden hand. "It was merely a jape. No harm was meant."

The boy relaxed as well and the dark knight released his grip on the youth, returning his hand to the wolf's fur.

"Though perhaps we _should_ think of a better name for you," the Kingslayer continued, his tone once again boyish and carefree.

Uneasy laughter filled the cavern for a moment before Harwin spoke up in a gruff voice, his impatience apparent.

"If we're all done with the kissing and making up," the Northman growled, "can we get back to discussing more important matters?"

"Yes," Satin agreed, giving a cold look to the Kingslayer. "I was saying that though I do not doubt him brave enough for such a venture, the Lord Commander's loyalty and honor would likely not allow such an attack, no matter how justified." The boy sounded bitter as he spoke. "But, what then?"

"Winterfell," Harwin provided, sounding sure. "And with a hundred thousand wildlings at his back, and the castle's defenses compromised by the sacking, he should have no trouble taking it."

"More like to be eighty thousand, now," Satin corrected, "with those we killed in the battle and those that chose not to kneel or scattered and ran when Stannis showed up. And some of those eighty thousand are women and children."

"Still a formidable force, though," Tom commented. "And the women, if they are spearwives, would count as useful among that number."

"Perhaps our lady tires of killing green Freys and hapless Lannister bannermen," Ser Jaime suggested. "Perhaps she might have a taste for Bolton blood now. Lord Bolton murdered her son before her eyes and his bastard claims to have wed her youngest girl."

"Slipping past Moat Cailin, though..." Thoros mused. "It's full of Bolton's men."

"Howland Reed?" Jaime suggested. "I'm certain he remains loyal to the Starks, if only for the memory of Ned Stark."

"Good luck finding him," Tom snorted. "You'll be ten times more likely to be eaten by lizard-lions than discover the location Greywater Watch."

Harwin sighed and stood from the boulder that had served as his perch, saying, "Until our lady approves of this plan, there is no point in discussing it further."

The wolf stood and growled, drawing nervous titters from those around her.

"It seems Lady Nymeria is in favor of the march north," Gendry remarked pleasantly, then, turning his head to look at her, he gazed into her eyes and spoke directly to the wolf. "You wish to see her brother again, don't you, m'lady? And perhaps yours as well?"

_Yes,_ the girl thought. _To the North and Jon Snow. And Ghost. And Winterfell._ The great beast pressed her wet snout against the dark knight's jerkin.

"And so you shall," Gendry whispered to the wolf. _To her._ "I have seen it in my dreams."

The company began to break up, Harwin off to speak with Lady Stoneheart, Ser Jaime and his female companion of like size to take the first watch of the night, the others to their rest. After a moment, only Gendry and Nymeria remained in the echoing cavern chamber.

"Do you think she will come, m'lady?" the knight asked the direwolf, his face questioning. He was answered with silence, and the girl felt a pull then; one she thought she had conquered.

_I will be a Faceless Man. It's what I've always wanted._

The Bear's voice came to her then. _Who can say what you have always wanted, when what you want changes by the day?_

_I will see Jon again. It's what I've always wanted,_ the girl inside of the wolf thought then.

The dark knight buried his hands deep in the fur of the wolf's neck, facing her head-on and looking intently into her golden, unblinking eyes.

" _Come home, m'lady_ ," he whispered and the blue of his eyes pierced her to her core, through her wolf skin, over the land and sea, through layers of sleep and plans and intentions; through all of her declarations and assurances.

_Come home._

_Home. Where was home now?_ The girl stared hard at the towering knight through her borrowed eyes, the man so familiar and so foreign, all at once. She tried to puzzle out the answer to the question she had started to ask herself again, after thinking herself at peace with it. The wolf then caught the scent of something familiar; something which distracted her from her reemerging uncertainty; something which made her insides clench and painted images in her head which were familiar to the girl. Long hair, a white forelock prominent; an expression filled with fondness and vexation; a bloodstained blade gripped in graceful hands, wiped clean on a young girl's shift. The eyes peering at her were no longer blue, but a rather unlikely bronze and she whined again.

* * *

The assassin watched the girl for a moment longer, wondering if she would say more. When he had entered her cell silently, finding it dark, he found her fast asleep but talking.

" _Jon Snow_ ," he heard, and then a mumble that sounded like, " _Winterfell._ "

"Nar 'amala," he muttered and then sat on the edge of her mattress, meaning to wake her with a kiss. Before his lips could brush hers, however, she was mumbling again.

"It's what I've always wanted," she sighed, and then she whined.

The Lorathi smiled at the girl, leaning over her and then softly scraping his teeth along the shell of her ear just before he whispered, "What has a girl always wanted? She need only tell a man..."

His apprentice gave him a soft moan in reply, reluctantly allowing sleep to release its grip on her as her eyelids fluttered open at the sound of his voice.

"Hmmm," she moaned again. "I was dreaming."

"So a man gathered," he replied in his throaty purr, pulling insistently at the shoulder seam of his _second_ favorite blouse, moving the grey cloth down to bare her collarbone and upper arm. He kissed her gently in the crook of her neck, his lips moving along her collar bone until he found her small scar which he then traced with his tongue. She drew her shoulder up involuntarily with a slight shudder as she turned her face away from him, biting her lower lip as she did. "What was this dream about?"

She did not answer him immediately, not having understood the question through the haze of fading sleep and emerging lust that clouded her mind just then. When Jaqen's tongue left her flesh and he lifted his head slightly to look at her, awaiting her answer, she was finally able to process his inquiry properly.

"Nymeria," the girl yawned. "And Gendry." This drew the assassin up short.

"The boy who is no knight? A man could be jealous," he warned, and she thought he might be serious.

_No, he couldn't be._

"A man has no reason," she replied with a sleepy smile, pushing herself up and bracing her torso with one hand as she ran the other hand through his hair, resting it on the nape of his neck. She looked at him fondly through eyes still bleary with sleep and then pulled his head towards hers for a proper kiss. She brushed her mouth over his but had forgotten her own wound and winced when she tried to press against his lips harder.

Her master pulled back from her with concern, gently kissing the corner of her mouth, carefully avoiding her injury before he traced the area around the tender spot with his forefinger.

"And how did a girl come by this?"

"I'd rather not talk about it."

"It is unfortunate, then, that you do not have a choice," Jaqen remarked.

She crossed her arms stubbornly over her chest and gave him a distinctly _pouty_ look, and he leaned down to kiss the pout away. After half a minute, she uncrossed her arms and placed her hands against his chest, grasping the material of his _favorite_ blouse and using it to pull him in closer to her as he caressed her jaw line with his nose before nibbling her lightly just below her ear.

"Ah," the girl said, following that with a very articulate, "oh." She could feel him smiling against her neck and his breath on her skin wrought from her a shiver.

"A man is waiting," he murmured, pulling his face back from her despite the little noises of protest she made. "What happened to your lip?"

"Jaqen, I would really rather... It's no longer a problem! And anyway... well… what I mean to say... It's my own business, not yours!" she finally declared.

"Everything about you is a man's business," he purred in a way that caused her resistance to melt and drain from her. "Or had you forgotten that?" He cupped her chin in one hand as he peered down at her with his burning bronze eyes.

_Damn him!_ she thought. _I know he does that on purpose!_

"And a man has a special interest in the fate of his lovely girl's lips," her master continued, his tone unreasonably seductive.

_Cheater!_ She was finding it hard to keep her concentration. He was talking about her lips as he _regarded_ them with some sort of... _yearning_ showing in his expression. He subtly moistened his own mouth then and the small action caused her heart to stutter. _Stupid heart._

"If a girl cannot properly use them to kiss a man, he must deem it a problem of some significance."

The assassin's hands traveled down her sides until they found the girl's hips. He grasped her firmly there, moving the bed covers away and wrapping his fingers around her flanks as he used his thumbs to trace lines up and down, pressing harder as they passed over her hip bones. The sensation this created in her might have felt akin to tickling if she weren't so... _out of sorts._

" _You fight dirty_ ," his apprentice gasped, squirming marginally.

"This isn't a fight. A girl would have to first resist for it to qualify."

She gave a tiny squeak of displeasure, but the gesture was halfhearted at best. _She did not want to resist._

_But you always resist,_ her truant little voice piped up out of nowhere. _Everything. All the time._

_Not this, though,_ she sighed inwardly.

_Just so,_ her little voice capitulated.

"Besides, assassins aren't bound by any notions of fairness," he quipped. "One of the more useful lessons a master has learned from his sweet girl."

She managed a playful jape of her own, saying, "I find it terribly sad that the once formidable and terrifying Jaqen H'ghar is reduced to seducing secrets out of lowly acolytes where once he merely needed to threaten with a look." The insulting effect of the barb was somewhat lessened by the breathy manner in which the remark was delivered and also by the fact that her eyes closed involuntarily and she had to pause several times due to her hitching breath as the assassin continued his attentions to the girl's hip bones. "Oh, Seven... _bloody... ah._ "

"Threats are often more expedient," her master agreed amiably as one corner of his mouth quirked up, revealing his dimple, "but a man finds that seduction is _always_ more fun."

"Your brother thinks you do not know how to _have_ fun," she snorted, thinking how ridiculous that notion was. This was _loads_ of fun. Tortuous, twisting, burning, breathless, shivering, fevered _fun_. _So much delightfully incomprehensible fun, in fact, that she wasn't sure at that moment why she had ever bothered amusing herself in any other way._

"Hmm," her master responded, as if he were truly considering his brother's opinion at that moment. The Lorathi bent to place his lips in the sensitive notch at the base of her throat (though, just at that moment, all of her skin seemed to be equally sensitive). As she trembled slightly beneath his touch, he wondered vaguely if he ought to feel guilty about manipulating his young apprentice this way. But no, she had asked, _demanded_ , to be treated as a woman grown. She had insisted that she was not too young and he had agreed, succumbing to her will, as he nearly always did. He would not stop now simply because it was working to his own advantage currently.

As if to punctuate the fact that Jaqen pressed his _current advantage,_ the girl's quiet breathing became somewhat ragged and gasping as the Lorathi nipped the skin just above her breastbone.

No, he would not treat her differently than other women.

_Liar,_ accused a voice from somewhere inside of him. _Have you not already? Are you not now?_

It was true, he had to admit (though the admission was made with his hands still upon her hips, calloused thumbs coaxing both the truth and a more _physical_ surrender from his lovely girl). Any other woman he desired so strongly, if she desired him as well, he would not have hesitated to bed. What would be the purpose of denial? But _her,_ he felt driven to treat gently. _Her,_ he did not ( _could not_ ) prompt or compel. Had he not decided long ago that he must wait for her to come to him? Even if that meant she never did and he missed his chance? Any other woman he desired so strongly, he would have taken without hesitancy or guilt, but even as he thought it, he shook his head slightly, knowing that there was no other woman he had ever ( _could ever_ ) feel for in quite _this_ way. Arya Stark had somehow become... _his entirety._

"And was it a man's _handsome_ brother who marked a girl's lip?" the assassin inquired, purring his question against the side of her neck; _looking for a reason._

His tone was light and playful but his fingers flexed and his grip tightened slightly against the flesh of her hips as he spoke. Perhaps he would not gut his brother, but he might well choke him to death.

"No," the apprentice assured her master. "It wasn't him." She thought back to an incident in the stairwell not so long ago, and she knew that if she had displeased the handsome man severely enough, it would not be something as small as a broken lip and a bruised cheek that she sported.

Jaqen's hands began to knead the girl's hips, causing the pace of her heart to quicken somewhat, creating a sensation that she did not understand and she could not pull her wits together enough to pick it apart and study it. She seemed to be expanding and contracting all at once, vibrating with the urgency to both stop his hands and insist ( _beg_ ) that he _never_ let them stop. As she wavered between pushing him away and pushing herself more completely against him, she found that the indecision was _painful_ , except that it _wasn't._

Her mind was awash in chaos and confusion. She tilted her head back and stared past the assassin, looking up at her ceiling, searching the undulating shadows there for some touchstone that she might use to steady herself and regain her scattered focus.

"Lovely girl," her master cooed, his amusement at her reaction evident in his voice as he nuzzled the girl's ear. "A man waits for his answer."

_His hands are like Umma making bread,_ the apprentice thought nonsensically. _Lucky, lucky bread._ But his words had pushed her off the fence she was straddling and her indecision was no more. She fell away from him, dropping her head back onto her pillow and finally groaned at him to stop.

_Traitor!_ her little voice accused her.

"I can't _think!_ " she insisted, an admonishment to both her master and her little voice.

"A girl does not need to think," the Lorathi retorted, chasing her down to her pillow, scattering kisses everywhere his lips could reach, slow and deliberate: her forehead, her nose, her cheek, her neck, her collar bone, her shoulder. "She need only speak a name. A man will have the name, lovely girl." He pulled her earlobe between his teeth and began sucking at it gently. It was too much for her.

" _The Bear_ ," she reluctantly betrayed with a soft sigh, barely aware she was speaking. This name surprised her master. _The large boy who had been holding the girl's hand en route to the training room?_ He released her ear before he questioned her further.

"Was it some accident? Did a training blade slip?"

"No," she answered, her voice more steady as Jaqen's hands fell away from her hips and he stroked her bruised cheek gently with his fingertips, trying to solve the mystery of the injury. _The boy who had embraced his lovely girl in the street near the harbor with such obvious care and tenderness?_

"Well?" he impelled.

"We had a fight."

"You had a fight..."

"We fought."

"You... _fought_."

"Yes," she hissed, exasperated. "We fought, I said something nasty, he hit me, we made up, and it's fine now."

Jaqen was off of her in an instant, springing from her bed and moving through her door so swiftly, she barely had a chance to register what was happening.

"Oh, _hells_ ," she muttered, vaulting from the bed and catching him in the corridor before he could burst into the Bear's cell and kill the acolyte where he lay. She dragged the assassin back through her door, but it was not without effort. The girl crowded the Lorathi through her doorway and then slipped in after him, closing the door quietly behind her and leaning back against it to stop his departure. He held his hand up in front of him to stop the words he saw forming on her lips. He did not want excuses for the boy. He did not want justifications. He was as calm and quiet and still as a statue in a crypt, but his eyes were alive, boiling with his rage. She saw that he did not wish her to speak; she saw the hand raised between them, indicating his desire for her silence. Of course, she ignored his gesture.

"Jaqen," the girl began in her most soothing voice, "this is pointless. I have already handled it."

His gaze was steady, his voice resolute.

"A man will kill this boy."

"No, a man will _not_ , because a girl can bloody well _take care of herself_."

"Clearly," the assassin spat.

"Jaqen, _you_ once bruised my throat so badly that Umma thought I had barely escaped being murdered."

"A man did what was necessary so that a girl would learn caution," the Lorathi retorted. "It was done to _spare_ you from _real_ harm. It was done out of concern, not out of _anger_ at something _nasty_ a girl had said. It is not the same."

"Maybe not," the acolyte conceded, "but he is my brother, _my friend,_ and I am not some fragile, precious thing that needs protection. Please, Jaqen..."

Her brow was creased and her tone was pleading.

Her master placed his hand over his own mouth, staring at her and shaking his head. After a moment, he dragged his hand over his face, finally scrubbing at his hair with his fingers. Slowly, his apprentice approached him. The dove-grey blouse she had claimed for her own after forcibly removing it from her master was askew, baring her scarred shoulder, hem brushing against the front of her thighs. When she was within an arm's length, Jaqen reached for her and pulled her to him, enclosing her in his arms and pressing her tightly against his chest.

"But you _are_ a precious thing; _a man's most precious thing._ Even though a girl does not desire his protection, a man cannot help but to give it," the assassin warned.

"But in this case, if you do what you want to do, it wouldn't be protection. It would be revenge."

"A man recalls that a girl is not so opposed to revenge," he replied with a smirk, placing his lips on the crown of her head and leaving them there for several seconds before continuing. "Or, is that only allowed for you?"

"No, you're right. Revenge does not offend me, but revenge against my _brother_ does. He is important to me. I do not wish to see him harmed. I have harmed him enough already."

"And yet, a man saw no bruises on _his_ face," Jaqen pointed out. " _His_ lip was not bloodied."

"No. His wounds are much less superficial than mine," the girl told her master sadly. "And we have made our peace. I do not want _you_ to disturb it."

The assassin sighed, perhaps thinking of his own complex relationship with _his_ brother, and placed his hands on either side of the girl's face, tilting it toward his. He gazed down at her for a while in silence, studying her eyes, her wound, her bruising. Finally, he spoke.

"This is a boy's one pardon," the Lorathi said. "A man will not forgive this a second time."

"You will not need to," his apprentice told him with certainty.

"Good."

He bent his head to give her feather-soft kisses on her injured cheek. She smiled and pushed him back toward her bed, guiding him to sit and then straddling his lap. The girl pressed her forehead to his and told her master that he was precious to her, as well. He snickered.

"No, really," the girl insisted. "I mean it. If anything happened to you..."

"What does a girl fear now?" Jaqen murmured against her mouth. When she didn't answer him, he said, "You always insist that you can take care of yourself and do not need a man's protection or concern, but you will not favor a man with this same attitude."

"That's different."

"How is it different, lovely girl?"

"Because... I... am more... _careful_ than you. You walk around as if... you are _impervious_ to the dangers of being with me."

"A girl is not so dangerous. Not to a man."

The apprentice blew out a frustrated breath, snapping, "You know what I mean!"

"Yes, sweet girl. A man knows. Let a man worry about his master, though. You need worry only about yours."

"I thought you said _not_ to worry about you," she teased.

"A man misspoke. Not _worry..._ Perhaps, _see to_?"

"You wish for me to _see to_ you?" the girl asked, one eyebrow arched skeptically.

"Just so," he breathed. "Very much so."

She grinned and cocked her head to the side, regarding him with amusement for a moment.

"I think... this is something I can do."

* * *

After Jaqen left (refusing to answer her questions about what Loric had learned and using his damnable _distraction technique_ every time she tried to bring it back up again), the girl found that she was unable to sleep. Her mind was churning with the many troubles that plagued her recently, but foremost was the fight she had with her brother earlier. Even though she had apologized, she still felt a heavy guilt that sat like a lump of hot lead in her belly. The girl worried that he was suffering and that she was the cause. After brooding for half an hour, she arose from her bed, padding silently down the corridor, stopping only to briefly scratch the ears of the black and white tom prowling outside of her door. She entered the Bear's room without knocking. _It was safe—he was not nearly so good with throwing knives as she was._

"Scoot over," the Cat whispered softly to her brother after she came to his bed. He grunted, only half awake, but he complied. He lifted the covers a little for her, not questioning, and she slipped next to his warm body, pressing her back into him.

"You're not naked, are you?"

"No," he mumbled. "Thought you might come."

"Thank you."

"Welcome," he yawned, then remarked, "You're cold."

"I'm always cold," she told him and he dropped his arm over her and drew her in closer to his heat.

"What will Jaqen H'ghar say about this?" the boy wondered.

"Nothing, I imagine. He knows how much I care for you. It's the only reason you're still alive."

"Mmm," was his decidedly lackadaisical response. He was strangely disinterested in delving into the meaning behind those words, though perhaps he was astute enough to figure out what sort of issue the Lorathi might have with him at that moment, even in his sleepy state.

"Are you... how are you?" his sister wanted to know.

It was a question the tired boy had no wish to discuss just then. He pulled her in closer to himself, in the same way a child might hug a doll when seeking comfort, and kissed the back of her head before he gently rebuffed her.

"Shhh. Let's go to sleep."

They drifted off, the girl feeling warm and comfortable in her brother's embrace and the boy feeling a small reprieve from his gnawing loneliness and grief. When the girl awoke, her back remained pressed into her brother's chest and his arm was still thrown over her, but his hand had somehow found one of her breasts. _The right one,_ she noted for some inexplicable reason. She tried to move away from him, but he held her too firmly, his arm heavy across her. The Cat called out the phrase her master had taught her and her brother's cell was awash in light as his candle flamed to life.

"Bear," she called hoarsely. "Bear!"

"Mmm?"

"Why are you groping me?"

"Mmm?"

"Bear!" she nearly shouted. "Wake up and get your hands off of me!"

She felt the boy stir behind her then, saying something only partly intelligible, but it sounded like, "Go back to sleep, Olive." His grip on her tightened, pulling her in closer. She kicked backwards at him, her heel finding his shin and striking it just hard enough to finally wake him.

"What in the bloody... Ah!" the large boy cried, startled to see that the woman he was holding (and _fondling_ ) was different than the one he had thought. In his haste to withdraw his arms from her and push her away, he knocked her out of the narrow bed in which they had only barely fit together.

"Ow!" the Cat yelled from the floor. "That was rude!" She was on all fours, pushing herself up.

"Sister!" the Lyseni panted. "I'm... I'm so sorry!"

He sat up quickly and set his feet on his floor, reaching down for the girl and pulling her up to stand.

"Are you alright?" he asked her. "Are you hurt?" He did not wait for her answer as she stood before him but inspected her knees, which had struck the stone floor. The Lyseni brushed his fingers tenderly over the injured flesh. Red, but the skin was not broken. There would be bruises but all in all, the hurts were minor ones.

"I'm fine. It's not the first time you've thrown me out of your bed. I can take a hint," the Cat smirked.

"No, no, I'm really sorry. I was just... you startled me, is all. I was dreaming and when you woke me up, you..."

"I wasn't who you were expecting?"

"I'm... sorry about... you know," he mumbled, waving his hand vaguely in the direction of her breasts.

"You're sorry about what, brother?" she asked, her voice pitched a bit higher than usual, all innocence; teasing. She gave a small laugh as the boy's face reddened.

"I thought you were Olive," the Bear continued, his voice hoarse, caught somewhere between his embarrassment and his grief that the dream was not real. "I should have... known."

"You were half asleep," she soothed, regretful that she had teased him. "No, _more_ than half, I'd say."

"Yes, but I should have known. You are... _not Olive_."

The way he said that last bit struck the girl as strange. _Of course I'm not Olive,_ she thought. _What is his point?_

"No, I'm not," she agreed, "but how could you have known?"

The boy's face turned a deeper shade of red as he stuttered out a response.

"Olive is... _was..._ well... her shape..."

It was the Cat's turn to blush. Her lips parted slightly and she gave a tiny gasp as she took a step back from him. The girl looked down at herself, the soft swell of her breasts apparent through her master's blouse but nowhere near as substantial as Olive's had been. She bit her lip, mortified. She had a sudden memory of Olive helping a widow bathe, delivering the gift of a fine, sheer sleeping gown which the widow, in a fit of pique, had offered to the buxom girl.

_I don't think I would fit these clothes,_ Olive had said. _They look as if they were made for you, and you are... quite thin._

_Quite thin, indeed,_ the Cat thought as she studied herself through the grey blouse, snorting. Her brother looked at her quizzically.

"Do I look like a boy?" she asked him tentatively, looking up at him. "Be honest."

"No! Gods, no, Cat!" the Bear declared, taken aback. "Why would you..."

"I _know_ I'm not shaped like other girls. I'm too... _hard_ and not plump enough."

"Sister, it's not your shape, it's your... _everything._ Your _everything_ is not like other girls."

Her face fell and her shoulders slumped. Is that what Jaqen thought of her too?

The Bear saw the effect his words had on the girl and scrambled to clarify.

"I mean, you're just _different._ But in a good way. You're honestly... you're just... everything about you is..."

She folded her arms across her chest, suddenly self-conscious, and sighed.

"It's okay, brother. You don't have to try to make me feel better. I've always known that I would need to develop other skills because I didn't have any of the features that seem to be important to ladies. It's strange, though. My mother was a great beauty and even as a young girl, it was obvious that my sister would surpass her. My aunt, my father's sister, is said to have been a great beauty as well. Men fought a war over her. I use to wonder if the wildlings had stolen the real Stark daughter from her cradle and replaced her with _me._ If it hadn't been for Jon... we always favored, and there was a bit of our father in us, so I knew I couldn't _truly_ be a wildling, but still..."

"I've never heard you speak this way before," the boy said softly, holding his arms open to her. The Cat shuffled toward her brother. The Lyseni pulled her into his lap like a child in need of comfort, and he felt that maybe it was even true. She seemed younger to him then than even when she first entered the temple at two and ten. He rocked his sister gently.

"I'm just being stupid," she said. "It isn't as if beauty is important. _Especially_ not here. I never cared much before, honestly. No one enjoys being insulted, of course, but it always seemed rather pointless to me. Beautifully dressed hair does not stay beautiful for long when you are sparring and fine silk dresses make climbing trees and wrestling your brothers next to impossible."

"So why this sudden... melancholy?"

"Well, now there's... _Jaqen_. I think... I think he loves me for... We're just very alike, he and I. But... oh, never mind. I'm just stupid."

"Cat," the large acolyte began, "you should not think..." The boy sighed and pulled his sister's head under his chin protectively. "You are fierce and you _are_ hard and you can do things... most of the other apprentices only wish they could do. That alone is enough..."

"I know. I sound like a ridiculous child, worried Jaqen's head will be turned by someone who is better than me; someone with a pleasing shape and a fair face. I should be too ashamed to whine about wanting to be _pretty_ like some bloody lady in some bloody story when I ought to just be grateful that..."

"You didn't let me finish," he interrupted, and she quieted. "All that you can do and all that you have accomplished is enough to win the admiration of most men. The smart ones, anyway." Here, she snorted and her brother smiled. "But you should not think that is all there is. I have never seen your mother or your sister or your aunt, but I feel confident that you are every bit as beautiful..."

She shook her head, saying, "No, that's not true. They..."

"Stop interrupting me," her brother said sternly. "Cat, I don't know why you can't see what everyone else does. Sometimes I think that's your fatal flaw. You always seem to see something different than the rest of us, and not just when it comes to your appearance. But trust me when I say that you are... one of the most beautiful creatures I have ever seen. And we live in _Braavos,_ so remember, I have seen the courtesans..."

"You have to say that. You're my friend," the girl pouted.

"Because I am your friend, I have to be honest."

"So, even though I have the curves of a green boy, you don't find me... ugly?"

"Cat, you do _not_ have the curves of a green boy."

"That's not what you said after you threw me out of your bed!" the girl huffed.

"No, I said you weren't _Olive,_ but... there was only one Olive," the Lyseni spoke softly. "That doesn't mean... Look, I _felt_ you..."

She pulled back from him so that she could glare up at his face.

"I'm sorry!" he blurted, turning crimson again. "I didn't _mean_ to, but still... You are... You _feel..._ You have the most..."

With every false start, her eyes narrowed further and her lips pinched.

Exasperated, he forced her head back under his chin so that she would stop looking at him.

"You have wonderful breasts!" the Bear declared hastily, and then moaned, "But can we _please_ just stop talking about them? I think I'm going to be sick..."

"Fine. Just don't tell Jaqen you touched me, even if it wasn't intentional."

" _If_ it wasn't?" he cried, dismayed. "Sister!"

She snorted at him, but then continued, "He almost killed you last night and I don't know if I could stop him a second time."

"Don't worry," he said, his voice conveying a sort of hoarse assurance, "we are _never_ speaking of this again." He swallowed hard, trying to find other things upon which to focus.

* * *

"You have made noticeable progress. You are much better," the handsome man pronounced as the girl turned his blow. She had no time to bask in the compliment for her brother was using his longsword to press her from the other side and she turned her head to give him more of her attention. She got him off his balance and slapped his wrist hard with the flat of her bastard blade, causing him to grunt in pain.

"Sorry," the Cat called hastily to the large acolyte, ducking under the handsome master's swing and throwing her leg out to tangle his feet. He stumbled but did not fall. She sprang up as the master attempted to regain his balance and spun around the Bear, driving the edge of her sword hard behind his knees hard, forcing him to the floor. _Quick as a snake,_ she leaned over his shoulder and used her slender steel to knock his sword from his hand before she focused fully on the handsome man. Her thin, sweat soaked tunic clung to her like a second skin and as she whirled around to follow the master's movements, she caught her brother staring at her chest and smirking.

"You said we were never speaking of it again!" she cried, thrusting the bastard sword at the handsome man's belly.

"I'm not _speaking_ of it," the boy retorted, his grin widening. "You should have worn your doublet, is all."

"It was too hot!" she protested. "Quit trying to distract me!"

"You're distracting _me,_ " he countered, sitting back on his haunches, watching the Rat's master move in a graceful circle as the girl studied him warily.

"What are you two imbeciles going on about?" the handsome man demanded, advancing on the girl a bit.

"Nothing!" the acolytes declared simultaneously.

"Then be quiet. You are both distracting _me_."

The girl began to smirk then, a wicked plan materializing instantly.

"Well, if you must know..." she began.

"I don't really need to..." the handsome man interrupted, directing a swift, precise cut at her. She moved aside easily.

"I woke up this morning to find the Bear's hand on my breast and we had a discussion about how mine compared to others he has felt," the girl declared, triumphantly. "He said they were... fine."

"Cat!" the Lyseni choked, his mouth agape and his face coloring instantly. He was more than content to jape with his _sister_ , but this master was another matter altogether.

The handsome man stopped in his tracks, looking between the two acolytes, his expression... _horrified_? It was all the girl needed. She moved in and easily disarmed him, deftly placing the tip of her longer blade over his heart.

Her master expected her to demand that he yield in that ridiculous Westerosi way, but instead, all she said was, "Men are idiots."

The handsome man did not look amused and he merely retrieved his blade, replacing it in the rack, indicating that the acolytes should do the same. He sent the Bear away, telling him the waif had need of him next. The girl made to follow but the master's hand on her arm stopped her. The Lyseni stopped to wait for her but the master sent him on with a curt, "Valar morghulis."

The Bear's face was worried, thinking of all that the master was capable of (thinking of those _two sailors_ ), but his sister's smile encouraged him and she said, "I'll see you at the midday meal, brother."

When the boy had left them, the handsome man grabbed the girl by both of her arms, turning her to face him.

"So you're sleeping with your _brother_ now?" he demanded.

"Well, not _habitually_." the Cat offered, but then, seeing the odd expression on the assassin's face, she felt somewhat _nervous_ and therefore compelled to expound. "It was my first time. Why?" Rather than settling the man, he looked almost... _stricken._

_What in the bloody hells?_ she thought.

"Did he touch you?" the handsome man asked rather urgently.

"I just said so, didn't I? It really was accidental, though."

"No, I mean... have you... _lain_ with him?"

Confusion colored the girl's features as she considered the master's question. Slowly, she began to take his meaning and her grey eyes widened.

"Are you asking me if... Do you really think the _Bear..._ and... _I..._ "

"I don't know what to think," he barked with impatience. "That is why I am _asking you_."

"No! We would never... _He_ would _never_... Bloody hells, he's _grieving._ And I would not... Ugh!"

The handsome man released her arms and walked over to the bench, perching on the edge as he regarded the girl.

"This is a serious matter, little wolf," he told her. "You are already dancing too near the edge of danger in the order. The principal elder..."

"Why should it matter, anyway?" the Cat asked, almost as if she had not heard him speaking to her. "I _know_ all of you have... Well, _you_ just do whatever you want!"

The assassin looked at her with unfathomable eyes, tracing her form with his gaze.

"Not _whatever_ ," he finally responded. "No."

"Well, I have done nothing wrong, and neither has my brother," she sniffed. "It is not like that between us."

The handsome man eyed the apprentice suspiciously, trying to gauge her honesty. After a moment, he seemed to accept what she said as truth, but still had stern words for her.

"Stay out of his bed, my girl," the master warned, "and see that it does not _become_ like that between you."

"You give him far too little credit," the Cat huffed. "My brother would never lay a wrong finger on me. Not on purpose."

"You give _yourself_ far too little credit," the assassin countered. "There are few men in this world who could be presented repeatedly with such a temptation and not give in."

She protested, saying that she had _yet_ to meet a man who did _not_ resist whatever this supposed temptation was that she presented.

"I have lived in this temple, surrounded by men, for nearly four years, and no one has even _suggested_ to me that..."

"Do you think this is by accident, little wolf?"

"What?"

"It is fortunate for you that while under the same roof with a multitude of men, you are _also_ under the same roof with the one thing that can deter them."

"And what is _that_?" the girl asked icily, knowing he was about to throw Jaqen's name out with a sneer and it would instigate an argument between herself and the handsome master. She braced herself for it. No, she _welcomed_ it.

"Why, your _Kindly Man_ , my girl."

The answer had caught her off her guard and she was nonplussed, not knowing what to say. The stayed in the training room, silent, for some time after that. The handsome man finally rose from the bench, stretching.

"The acolytes' feast is tonight," the master told her. "After your noon meal, take a bath and make yourself presentable. Your robe has been laundered and should be in your cell."

The girl quirked an eyebrow at him.

"This feast is meant to honor the accomplishments of those ready to take their final trial. It is an important tradition," he lectured, "and one you should take seriously!"

"Are you saying my sweaty tunic isn't _presentable?_ " the girl chirped, smirking up at him. He sighed, his eyes falling to the soaked and clinging garment.

"Well, your brother really _is_ and imbecile," he grunted.

" _What_?" she asked, confused. "What are you talking about?"

"Your breasts are not just _fine_ ," he finally answered, looking up at her with a wicked grin. She started to gasp at his impropriety but then vowed not to let him get the better of her. They were sparring once again, just as surely as they had earlier. Just because they did not hold steel in their hands did not make it any less a point of honor to fight with all the skill afforded them.

"Actually," the Cat drawled, "I believe the word he used was _wonderful_."

"Just so," the handsome master agreed, nodding his head slightly. "Perhaps I have misjudged the boy."

"Indeed," she agreed haughtily, turning to leave the training room.

"Don't forget, little wolf: _presentable_."

She sniffed but made no answer as she continued toward the door.

"And one more thing!" he called after her. "Try not to fall into bed with anyone on your way!"

* * *

The midday meal was not well-attended. The Cat assumed that many of the masters and priests were occupied with the various preparations for the feast that night. She had never been to an acolytes' feast as no acolytes had completed their trials and taken vows in the nearly four years since she had first walked through the ebony and weirwood doors, so she had no idea how much ceremony and pomp was involved with the celebration, but felt there must be _some_ reason her handsome master was insistent on her appearance being less haphazard than usual. And a freshly laundered robe? _Seven hells..._

The girl and her large brother sat across the table from little Loric. Though there were few in the hall eating, the Cat was surprised to find Loric chatting animatedly with _Syrio_ when she arrived.

"What are you _doing_ here?" the Cat asked the little pot boy, feeling a slight sense of alarm at seeing him. "I thought you were living with Brusco!"

"I am," the boy told her, "but one of the masters told me I needed to be here for the feast tonight."

"But... why?" she pressed, wishing the boy was _anywhere_ but here.

The curly headed boy just shrugged and then fell upon his plate, eating ravenously as Loric prattled on about the sorts of things little boys enjoyed discussing. _Eels_ were featured prominently in the chatter.

The girl looked at the Bear and he seemed to understand her concern. _Of course he did. He had warned her, hadn't he?_ But then, she had also returned to the temple during her sojourn with Brusco, as she recalled; to serve; to meet with the Kindly Man; to learn the early lessons presented to all acolytes. There was nothing suspicious about it particularly. It was just that the timing was unfortunate. She had to earn her face _somehow._ The Lyseni boy must have felt her persistent tension, because he squeezed her knee under the table.

She glanced around the table after a time and saw that there were no masters or priests remaining, the two that had been present upon her arrival having already eaten and left. She leaned across the table and asked Loric again about what he had overheard from the drunken sailor weeks back. The boy had nothing to add that she did not already know.

"Did you ask the Lorathi master?" the Bear murmured in her ear when he saw the look of disappointment on her face.

"He wouldn't tell me anything."

"Well, don't let it worry you. Soon, you'll have the power to change your face whenever you want. Let them try to find you then."

He squeezed her knee again and then told her he would see her at the feast.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going back to my bed to rest. You wore me out in the training room, and for _some_ reason or another, I didn't get as much sleep last night as I had intended," he laughed lightly, and then added in a teasing whisper, "You're welcome to join me, of course. You could probably use a nap as well."

The handsome man's very recent commandment that she stay out of her brother's bed came back to her then.

"What, and disturb your beauty rest when you are in such sore need of it?" she scoffed. "Besides, I'd be too afraid that you'd try to be _inappropriate_ again."

"Well, if you're _afraid,_ I certainly understand," the boy prodded. "But really, I think I have the more legitimate complaint. First, you tried to undress me..."

"I removed your _boots,_ you blushing maid!" the girl scoffed.

He continued, undeterred, "And _then_ you pushed your breast into my hand!"

"Oh, yes, brother, you are right, of course. It was all _me,_ and you thwarted my clever attempts to seduce you by throwing me out of your bed!"

His face looked truly contrite then.

"I _am_ sorry about that. But, I think you got your revenge in the training room." He held up his wrist then and showed her the ugly bruise that had formed where she assaulted him with the flat of her blade. She reached out a finger and stroked the injured flesh carefully.

"I suppose we're even," the Cat conceded.

"I suppose we are," he echoed. "That means the next person to strike is the villain."

"It will not be me," she assured him. "I am a _master_ of self-control."

The Lyseni acolyte snorted then and patted his sister on the back in an overtly patronizing fashion. She gave him a withering look. He left soon after and eventually, the Cat did too, bound for the bath. Once she was stripped and soaking under mountains of froth created when she washed her hair and scrubbed at herself vigorously with the waif's special soap, she leaned back against the rear wall of the tub, realizing just how right the Bear had been. She _could_ use a nap. She thought the better of falling asleep in the tub (aside from the risk of drowning, she always seemed to linger too long and become chilled), but the steam and the warmth of the room and the heat of the water loosening her muscles soon proved too much for her to resist. Her head fell back, balanced on the edge of the copper tub, and she allowed her eyes to drift closed. When she opened them again, she was in Winterfell.

"Your grace!" Gendry cried as she burst through the doors at the end of the long gallery, wading out into the snow. He knew she wore only dainty slippers (how she had railed against them, demanding to know whose stupid idea it was to even bring such ridiculous things into a castle surrounded by fifteen feet of snow. _A gift from the dragons,_ she had been told), and quickened his pace to save her from losing a toe. When he reached her, he swept her up out of the ice and snow, carrying her as a groom carries his bride, ignoring her protests.

"You're not even wearing your cloak, you little fool," the knight hissed at his queen. "Where are you going?"

"The crypts!" Arya told him desperately. "My father..."

The girl had been visiting her father's tomb more frequently of late, he knew, but why she felt compelled to go just _now,_ in the middle of her nameday feast, he did not understand. Without speaking, he carried her across the yard and into the Great Keep, setting her back on her feet once the guards had shut the doors behind them.

"Can you feel your toes?" the towering knight asked, running his hands briskly up and down her cold arms in a familiar way that was studiously ignored by the guards.

"Honestly, you worry too much," she chided him. "You know the cold does not bother me."

"Aye, but losing a foot might."

The girl sighed, seeming suddenly tired as she asked, "Do I try your patience very much, Ser Gendry?"

"You're a right sharp pain in my arse, m'lady," he told her with a twinkle in his eye, "and I'd follow you to the edge of the world."

"You are my oldest friend," she whispered then, reaching up to touch his face, her gaze soft with memory. After a moment, she seemed to refocus as she scratched at the scruff on his chin. "I don't think I'll ever get used to the beard, though."

He smiled at her before lifting his brow and eyeing her up and down.

"And _I_ don't think I'll ever get used to someone besides a skinny squirrel answering to your name, your grace," Gendry smirked. "I _certainly_ can't get used to you in such an intricate dress."

Her expression changed in an instant, small smile melting into a sneer as she locked eyes with him.

" _Bloody dragons_ ," she seethed, and he nodded in solidarity.

_Yes,_ he thought. _Bloody fucking dragons, especially that_ one _in particular._ Well, if nothing else, she looked beautiful. Of course, she had always looked beautiful to him, but in this incredibly adorned and finely worked dress, she looked more of a dream; a dream of a _queen. A queen of winter._

_She hated it, too, the little ice-wolf._ He could tell. She never wanted this; had no love for her own crown. He was sorry for the heavy burden she was forced to bear, but he did not know how to tell her that, so he simply took her hand and led her through the lower level of the keep and down the long corridor that connected it to the armory. Once there, he found a warhammer, as she had requested and then they continued on to the Guards Hall. Thankfully, it was connected to the armory as the armory was connected to the Great Keep. It was only the last bit of their journey that would be out of doors. He found a storeroom in the hall and entered, ignoring her questions and her pleas that he hurry.

"I must catch up to him!" she begged, and he did not know who she could mean.

"I'd be a poor shield if I let my queen freeze to death within the walls of her own castle," he returned lightly. "I'd probably never be asked to serve in this capacity again." He turned to her and offered her an overlarge, thickly furred cloak and a pair of boots. She grinned at him and slipped her feet, damp slippers and all, into the heavy boots.

"Elegant," she remarked, comically stomping around a bit to demonstrate.

"We can sacrifice appearances, just this _once_ , can't we, your grace?" the dark knight teased, throwing the massive cloak over her shoulders and fastening the clasps. "If it means that I get to keep my job?"

_And my head,_ he did not add, thinking that Jon Snow would not look kindly upon any man who allowed his treasured sister to freeze to death in the crypts. Ever since their reunion, Jon had been as protective of his _little sister_ as any brother in the history of Westeros could ever claim.

"Alright, then, for _you_. I wouldn't want you to lose your head over anything so trivial as footwear," the girl japed, and the towering knight felt chagrined. She had moved in and out of his head so stealthily that he would have never known she was there had she not given him her clue. "Anyway, I find I quite like having you around, Ser Gendry."

She winked at him and then turned swiftly toward the exit that would lead them into the part of the snow covered grounds they must cross to get to the entrance of the crypts. He watched her wistfully for a few moments before he followed.

The cold blast when she left the hall and entered the snows on the grounds instantly chilled her, raising goose prickles over her entire body. She began to shiver and the shaking motion became ever more violent, the snow sloshing around her wetly, soaking her up to her neck. She looked down at herself and found that her cloak was gone, and so was her dress. She was naked in the yard, left without even her silvery, jeweled slippers.

"Maybe you should get out now, little wolf," she heard Gendry call from behind her, but it didn't _sound_ like Gendry. "The water has gone cold."

Her eyes flew open to see the handsome man standing over her holding her black and white robe.

"I was afraid you had drowned," he told her with a smirk, sinking into the one available chair in the room. "Who is Ser Gendry?"

"Your concern is _so appreciated_ ," the apprentice replied with as much sarcasm as she could muster as one who had just awakened suddenly from an odd dream to find herself in a chilly bath with a very _smirky_ assassin lingering over her. She ignored his question about the bastard knight, not wishing to discuss Gendry. _The dreams felt ever more real,_ she thought, feeling somehow distressed by the fact.

"Well, I rather thought an acolyte drowning in a bathtub might throw a pall over the festivities tonight, and I'd hate to ruin anyone's digestion, least of all my own," the handsome master replied with a sort of studied boredom. "I hear Umma is making lemon cakes."

The room was somewhat dim and by some miracle, the girl's soapy foam had not completely forsaken her, so her modesty remained protected. Why, then, did she feel so _exposed_ under the assassin's cool gaze?

"Did you come to tell me about the lemon cakes?" the girl asked, mimicking his tone from under one quirked eyebrow.

"No, my girl, I came to bring you your robe," he answered, indicating the garment draped over his arm. "I know you're in the habit of parading naked between the bath and your cell, but it seems you've become enough of a lure to your brothers even _in_ your clothes of late. I thought I would spare them the pain of temptation."

"I don't parade naked," she insisted, frowning a bit.

"Near enough!" he the assassin retorted. "Wrapping yourself in wet linen does not really leave much for the imagination, my girl."

"You certainly love your _near enough,_ don't you?" the Cat asked rhetorically, giving her handsome master a small laugh. "And your piety is absolutely inspiring. Did you ever consider taking Septon's vows?"

He returned her smile, replying, "I can't say that I ever did, no."

"Pity. The Seven would have been truly blessed to have a servant such as you."

The master bowed his head to her in mocking acknowledgment. She chuckled quietly at the gesture, amused with him in spite of herself.

"Thank you for bringing my robe," she said, quite unexpectedly. Her words surprised both of them. The handsome man recovered first.

"Well, I can't allow you to tempt that lumbering boy into trouble," he told her, sardonic as ever. "It has been years since the last assassin took his vows, and the Lyseni is so very close."

The girl's frown returned as she said, "I told you, it's not like that between us. You needn't worry."

"Ah, but he is a man who has known the pleasures of a woman's body now."

"So?"

The assassin's expression softened as he considered her youth once again. For as much as she had endured in her life and for all of her training, in some areas, she remained _far too trusting_.

"He will crave it again," the master assured her, and then clarified, "what he had with that woman. And he has not had to test his self-control in this area yet. You are just at his fingertips. It would be all too easy..."

"You really _do_ care," she interrupted, her voice sounding incredulous.

_Yes,_ he thought, _but not for the reasons you might think._ He spared a moment to wonder at that, realizing all at once that he might care for more reasons than he had previously understood himself. But no, he had his orders and they did not allow for any sort of personal feeling.

_Even I am not so Faceless that I am completely devoid of feeling,_ he had to admit to himself. _I feel what I feel._

The handsome man looked at the girl, her neck and shoulders peeking out of the bath, and he gave the smallest of sighs, forcing his mask of indifference on. It felt very tight and uncomfortable, but the unpleasant sensation emanated from his heart rather than his face.

_I may feel what I feel, but she does not need to know of it_ , he acknowledged sternly.

"Of course I'm concerned, little wolf. I can't allow a boy sick with love for his wild sister to take his vows." His playful manner had returned, all indications of seriousness erased. "He would be intolerable to be around! Have you ever had to deal with a lovesick fool before? It's all annoying poetry and sighing and irritating smiles at the most inappropriate times." He made a disgusted face and feigned a shudder. She laughed and so did he.

"I have seen the phenomenon," the Cat revealed conspiratorially to the master.

The girl thought of Sansa then, and how she favored the songs and the stories that told of love and valor. The acolyte cast her mind back to a time long ago, when her family had all been strong and happy and _whole._ She could almost hear Sansa's naïve, dreamy declarations of what her future would be; hopes she shared with her friend Jeyne. _Jeyne thought she was in love with Beric Dondarrion,_ the girl thought, wondering what sweet, stupid little Jeyne Poole would think of the incarnation of Lord Beric that Arya had met after her escape from Harrenhal. She shook her head slightly, imagining the shocked look the girl's face would be like to display. _Both the steward's daughter and her sister had mooned over the knight of flowers like silly little children,_ she recalled, her lip beginning to curl with her distaste. The handsome man studied her expression with fascination.

_But that's what they were, then,_ she thought a bit sadly, feeling suddenly remorseful for every harsh judgment she had ever passed against her beautiful sister. _And all they really should have had to be. It was not them that behaved contemptibly, but the world around them. Young girls in the first flush of youth should be allowed to be ridiculous and lovesick and unrealistic. They shouldn't be forced to watch their fathers die and endure beatings and to have every hopeful dream ripped from their heads to be replaced with horrors._

She bit her lip, nearly piercing it, seeking the pain; _penance for nearly allowing some childish notion of anger at the unfairness of the world to surface. Stupid girl,_ she thought. _You are not Sansa. You know better._

"What are you thinking of, my girl?" The master's voice was soft then, with no trace of mirth or teasing. The girl's eyes drifted down to the surface of the water, watching the gentle motion of the bubbles as she shifted slightly.

"A different lifetime."

"Do not dwell, little wolf," the assassin advised, his voice low. "The past can never be undone, and your future is... _shining_. You have only to reach for it."

The Cat gave the master a small smile, and to him, it seemed appreciative.

"Sometimes I think you would be a very fine friend to have," the apprentice told him, turning so that her forearms were folded along the edge of the tub nearest him, one atop the other. Her chin, she perched on her stacked arms as she appraised him keenly, narrowing her eyes. "Perhaps if you smirked less…"

"Do not be fooled, little wolf," the handsome assassin cautioned. "I could not be made to care enough to suit your taste. You seem to prefer your men very _needy_."

The girl gazed at the handsome man for a long moment and the sensation of her silvery, shadowed eyes probing his own was almost like a physical touch to him. _What was she looking for?_

"You don't fool me," she whispered at last. "I see you."

His smirk appeared once again, lifted like a shield between them; armor to protect whatever was left of his soul.

"And just what do you think you see, my girl?"

The girl gave him another smile, but this time, it looked a little sad to his eye.

"I see that of all the men I have ever known, both within these walls and without, it is _you_ who has the most need."

He stared at her and she did not look away from him. Finally, he stood, giving no indication if her words had offended or pleased or affected him at all. _So very Faceless,_ she thought as he dropped her freshly laundered robe onto the chair and walked to the door.

"We are all of us broken," the girl called to his retreating form then and he did not know if it was meant as mere observation, some attempt at comfort, or an accusation.

As he exited the room, he spoke quietly, and without looking at her.

"I have asked you to stay out of my head."

But she had not used her gift at all.

* * *

The Cat left her cell, attired in her soft robe of black and white wool, hair freshly washed and braided. She meant to knock on her brother's door and collect him for the feast. Before she reached his chamber, however, his door opened, and out stepped Jaqen, adorned in his immaculate, cowled master's robe. The Lorathi master pulled the Bear's door closed and gave the girl his half-smile, eyes appearing amused.

"Valar morghulis, lovely girl," he said as he stepped past her and continued on his way. She gaped after him, but said nothing, concerned her brother might be in need of aid. She supposed she should take it as a good sign that her master's robe had not appeared to be spattered with blood, but she knew that one need not open an artery to kill a man. Without knocking, she threw open the boy's door, rushed into the room...

...and found her brother in only his small clothes, unfurling his black and white robe as he turned to see who had burst so unceremoniously through his door.

"Cat!" he hissed in embarrassment, quickly pulling his robe over his head.

"Why in the bloody hells are you naked?" the girl asked in astonishment, and the boy answered her with a glare. She looked away from him then and mumbled, "Sorry, but I was worried."

"Worried? Why?" he asked, straightening his robe and tying the belt at his waist. "You can look now."

"Hardly seems fair for you to act so embarrassed, anyway," the girl whined in a mock-pout, "after all the looking _you_ did this morning."

"I did _not_ look, sister," the large acolyte defended. "I _felt_."

"No, I'm sorry to contradict you brother, but you _first_ felt, and then later, in the training room, you _looked._ "

The Lyseni shook his head, a flush creeping up his neck as he lamented miserably, "We were never going to speak of this again!"

"You brought it up."

"What? _No I didn't!_ "

"Oh, hmm. I thought you did."

The boy growled his frustration up at his ceiling.

"Sister," the Bear started, trying very hard to keep his calm, "Tell me why you were worried."

"That's right, I had nearly forgotten!" she responded carelessly.

The boy shot her a look, and then asked suspiciously, "Have you just spent time with the Rat's master?"

The Cat was surprised by that, and answered without thinking. "Yes. Why do you ask?"

"Because you are always _insufferable_ after you've spent too much time in his company!"

"Oh, very well, I'll stop teasing you. I just saw Jaqen leaving and I was worried he might have... discussed our fight yesterday."

"No, he didn't mention it."

The girl narrowed his eyes and asked, "Then why was he here?"

"He needed to ask something of me."

The Cat looked at her brother expectantly. He returned her gaze without speaking. She became visibly agitated as she waited and when it became apparent that the boy did not plan to elaborate, his sister blew out an exasperated breath and then growled her _own_ frustration.

"What did he need?" she bit out slowly.

"Oh, he told me that if you asked that, I was to tell you... wait, let me try to recall it exactly... Oh, yes. I was to tell you, _not everything is meant for your ears, lovely girl_."

The girl released an irritated cry and then rushed to her brother, punching him in his arm.

"Sorry, Cat. He just really, really thinks that it's not your business," the boy apologized, trying very hard to suppress his mirth. He finally broke into laughter when he tacked on, " _Lovely girl._ "

"Idiot," she muttered. "Come on, you're going to make us late for the feast with your stupidity."

The Bear followed his sister docilely, chuckling all the way to the stairwell.

The two acolytes arrived in the rarely used great hall of the temple, finding more masters, priests, elders, and acolytes present than they had ever seen at one time while under the roof of the House of Black and White. To a person, they were clad in black and white robes. They had even found a robe small enough to fit Syrio, who sat at the lower end of the table with the youngest acolytes, including Loric. The Cat was surprised to find that upon their arrival, all those in attendance stood and greeted them in the traditional way. They were then led toward the head of the table, another surprise. She was given the waif's usual seat and the Bear was seated in Jaqen's traditional spot. Finally, the Kindly Man arrived and took his place at the head of the table. All had stood as he entered to room, a show of respect for his position, and as he took his seat, he bade everyone else to join him.

The room was well-lit with torches, candles and lanterns, revealing the details of the faces around the table. The girl studied them as the food began to be passed around, trying to read the expressions. Boredom ( _the handsome man_ ), curiosity ( _Jaqen, studying her. He must have wanted her to know he was wondering about something, otherwise she would have never been able to pick up on his thoughts since he was exceptionally talented at guarding them_ ), hunger ( _the waif. Perhaps she hadn't found time to eat with all the feast preparation for which she was responsible_ ), expectation, disapproval ( _this was directed toward Loric, animated as ever at his end of the table, discussing something trivial with a little too much enthusiasm_ ), excitement, awe ( _sweet Syrio_ )...

The girl furrowed her brow, wondering if she had overlooked someone. She looked around the table a second time, studying each face a bit more closely to be sure. _No, the rat-faced boy was not among their number. He must have been sent away on a mission already, and it must have been important to justify the order sending him ahead of his own acolytes' feast._ The Cat did not have time to consider the possibilities of her rat-faced brother's whereabouts further, for just then, the Kindly Man stood and cleared his throat. An expectant silence descended over the room.

"Valar morghulis, brothers and sisters."

"Valar dohaeris," they all returned as one.

"Yes, _valar dohaeris_ ," the principal elder repeated, rolling the words in his mouth as if considering them for the first time. It was a bit of theatrics that seemed appropriate in this setting. "Let us discuss these words."

The elder walked away from the table to the corner of the room where the pitchers of wine were lined up on a table, attended by one of the younger acolytes. The Kindly Man bent and spoke in low tones to the boy, whose eyes widened but then he nodded and walked toward the table, finally taking the elder's seat. The waif then rose from her seat (situated next to the handsome man, in the spot the Cat normally occupied), moving to the head of the table and the Kindly man joined her, carrying a single glass carafe of wine.

"All men must serve," the Kindly Man stated as the waif lifted the Bear's cup from the table and turned to hold it toward the elder. He filled it with wine and the waif returned the cup to the acolyte. They moved around the table in this manner as the principal elder continued to speak. "As members of this order and servants of the Many-Faced god, you will be asked to spend your life in the service of his will."

The masters and acolytes alike paid rapt attention to the elder. He and the waif had poured wine for more than half of the table, returning to refill the carafe as needed. As he approached the Cat, the Kindly Man began to speak again.

"Brothers, sisters, faithful servants of Him of Many Faces, as our words say, all men must die, but as we know, before that, all men must serve. I serve you tonight to show that there is no one among us who does not owe his service. There is no one among us who is not subject to our code."

The waif took the Cat's cup from in front of her and turned to hold it out to the elder. The Kindly Man poured the wine into the cup of his most favored acolyte and the waif returned it to her just as the elder said, "There is no one among us who is above the creed of the order. There is no one among us so important that they do not face the consequences of disobedience and there is no one among us so lowly that they do not have the opportunity to earn their just reward."

The words were spoken with a quiet solemnity, and seemed heavy with meaning. The Cat fought to suppress a shudder, feeling that there was an underlying context that was more sinister than the words seemed to indicate at first flush. _Why does it feel like they are speaking directly to me?_ she wondered. She wanted to look to Jaqen, to gauge his response, to seek reassurance in his eyes, but she did not dare, not when the Kindly Man had just been speaking on matters of _consequences_ and _disobedience._

Finally, the cup of the little acolyte now seated in the elder's chair was filled, completing the circle. The waif and the Kindly Man took their alternative seats and once they were settled, the Kindly Man lifted his goblet and toasted the feast.

"To consequences, and to rewards," he called. "Valar morghulis."

"Valar dohaeris," the celebrants all chanted. Everyone drank then, and the Cat wrinkled her nose at the red wine, but she drank a deep swallow anyway, as it seemed to be expected.

The girl did not feel hungry after the strange toast, but she caught a look from the handsome master and reluctantly took a bite of her supper. The warm bread left her mouth feeling dry, so despite her distaste, she took another sip of her wine. After a short while, with only a few bites of her supper eaten, she began to feel unaccountably sleepy.

_Maybe I really should have napped with my brother,_ she thought ruefully, _because as it turns out, a fitful sleep in a cold tub while having disturbing dreams is not all that restful._

The room was warm and the low murmur of surrounding conversation lulled the girl. Her lids drifted down slowly, bouncing open when she heard her brother calling to her.

"Cat, are you alright?" the Bear asked from across the table. "You aren't sick, are you?"

"No," the girl assured him, smiling. "Just drowsy. I didn't to take a nice, long nap like _some people._ "

The Lyseni returned his sister's smile, and then said quietly, "I _offered_ to let you join me."

She snorted at him then but said nothing further, her drowsiness growing. She only fought the drooping of her head for a few minutes, but finally succumbed, allowing her head to drop back against her seat. Her eyes closed then and she fell into a dreamless sleep. Whether it was a minute or an hour later, she was not sure, but she woke up briefly to find she was warm and cradled in arms that smelled of cloves and ginger. Jaqen was carrying her through the corridors of the House of Black and White. She tried to force her eyes open further, to see his face, to ask what was happening, but she could not make her tongue work. As if he could sense that she was awake, the Lorathi assassin spoke to her.

"Sweetsleep, lovely girl. It must have been in the wine. A man will place you in your bed so you can rest until it wears off."

His voice sounded sad, and she could not puzzle out the reason why.

"A man had hoped to give his lovely girl a proper goodbye," he sighed, answering her unspoken question.

_Goodbye?_

* * *

_**Forever**_ _-_ Papa Roach (Gendry told me he wanted this song. I told him it was really too dark for the situation but he insisted)

I could not decide between the next three songs for Jaqen and Arya's first section:

_**Half of You—**_ Cat Power (one)

_**I'm on Fire—**_ Bruce Springsteen (two)

_**Just Can't Get Enough—**_ Black Eyed Peas (three)

_**All I Want—**_ Kodaline (Poor Bear. Poor Olive. But, to be fair, you were the one who killed her, Bear. What? Too soon?)

_**Broken—**_ Seether ft. Amy Lee (we are all of us broken, handsome man)


	56. Chapter 56

_And I won't hear you cry when I'm gone. I won't know if I'm doing you wrong._

* * *

_Goodbye?_

What did Jaqen mean? Where was he going? He had not discussed any journey or assignment with her. Worry gripped the girl in her chest, wringing the breath from her and filling her insides with needles of ice which seemed intent on working their way through her skin and into the world around her.

The Cat tried to ask her master about it, this _goodbye_ , but she could barely lift her eyelids, much less engage him in conversation. _Goodbye?_ Had she merely misheard? Hope surged in her then as she thought perhaps he just meant that he had wanted to spend time with her tonight before returning to his own bed. Had he meant to say that he had wanted to bid her a proper _goodnight?_

She could not focus enough to form the words with her stiff and disobedient tongue or force them over her frozen lips. She was _so tired._ The curtain of blackness that fought to cover her would not be denied and despite her strong desire to speak with Jaqen, after she heard his lament and had those few fleeting thoughts, she almost immediately succumbed to the pull of the Sweetsleep and the warmth and comfort of her master's cradling arms.

Her bed linens were cool when she was placed upon them and the change of temperature from the heat of Jaqen's chest against her cheek to the chill of a soft pillow caused her to stir. Through a barely cracked eyelid, she could see that she was in her cell. Jaqen had lit her candle quietly. He was tucking her covers around her and bent to place a lingering kiss on her cheek. He started to pull away but hesitated and then leaned back down, pressing his forehead against hers.

"A man will miss his lovely girl," he murmured before straightening. She wanted make demands of him, to force him to explain what he was talking about (where he was _going_ ) but the Sweetsleep was preventing her. The Cat's frustration with her own inability to communicate was building. The assassin turned to leave her and she was able to force her eyes open wider but struggled to make her mouth work. When she saw the Lorathi place his hand upon her door to open it, his apprentice's heart began to pound almost painfully and she tried to scream at him. The faintest of whispers pushed past her lips, so soft and sighing that her master nearly missed it.

"Please don't go, Jaqen."

_Her plea to him in Harrenhal. Did he only imagine the words now? Did she?_

The assassin whirled and looked at her, half expecting to see a slip of a girl wearing a white shift marked with the life's blood of her brother's enemies. Instead, he found a woman grown, tucked into her bed, gazing at him quietly. _She had awakened._ He did not hide his surprise.

"Did you speak, sweet girl?" he asked, approaching her. The apprentice gave the tiniest of nods then and a look of delighted wonder mixed with confusion appeared on his face. "But... how?"

The Cat wasn't sure herself, as a drop or two of Sweetsleep in her wine should have put her out soundly for hours and hours. More than that would have insured that she never woke again. As her sluggish brain slowly awoke and considered to problem, she gave a small gasp. _Of course._

"Diluted," she croaked, her throat very dry. Jaqen sat on the edge of her bed and began stroking her face, pushing her hair back from her forehead and temples gently.

"A drop diluted in wine would still be very potent for a girl as small as you," he replied.

"No. I mean..." The girl struggled to sit. After only a brief pause, Jaqen helped her and leaned her back against the bed rail. "I used very diluted Sweetsleep with Atius Biro and there was some left. I sent it back to the temple with the Bear. He was supposed to replace it in the waif's stores. I meant to label it as soon as I got the chance but... I forgot..."

Her voice was still thick with the effects of the mild poison, but she was looking more alert by the minute.

"Ah, now a man sees. The vials look the same?"

"Exactly the same."

Her master chuckled at her, shaking his head slightly, wondering if this was yet more evidence that she was favored by Him of Many Faces, or the old gods, or perhaps all of them. He then donned a look of mock concentration and rubbed his chin as if considering an important problem.

"Hmm... A girl should label this vial _Cat Nap_." He crooked up one corner of his mouth and she snickered as she reached her hand out to stroke the dimple that appeared. The assassin moved his hand over hers then, trapping her cool palm against his face as he threaded his fingers through the girl's. She returned his smile but then thought of his words when he had pressed his forehead to hers and the smile slipped from her face. Her hand, she dropped back into her lap.

"What is the matter, lovely girl?"

"Where are you going?"

"Ah, yes. A man has been given an assignment."

"What, tonight?"

"A man must leave the temple shortly. The ship sails before the sun rises."

"But... My _trial_."

"A man knows, lovely girl. It could not be helped. Please believe, the case was pled most vigorously, but this duty... it is far too important to put off."

The girl looked crossly at her master, the fog continuing to slowly lift from her brain.

"And there is no one else who could do this thing?" she asked, her brow furrowed. She was displeased.

"There is no one else a man would trust to do this thing."

_Why not?_ she wondered.

She bit her lip and studied his face. His half-smile returned and he leaned forward, using his two fingertips to pull her lip from between her teeth. After he had rescued the flesh, he traced it softly with his thumb, staring at her mouth for a moment before he leaned in closer for a kiss. The feel of Jaqen's mouth on hers was too hard to resist, especially when she was not at full strength and so she allowed her half-formed questions and doubts to be pushed aside in favor of his tongue which lightly pushed between her lips until she let him to open her mouth with it. _Ginger,_ her compromised senses recognized as the assassin's tongue gently moved against her own. _Jaqen._ She sighed. When his hand clutched at the back of her head and urged her even closer, she felt a slight discomfort in the area of the healing wound on her lip but the feeling was swiftly buried by the steadily building urgency of his lips and his tongue and the havoc they wrought on her senses. There was this _feeling..._ She whimpered against him without thought and the sound of it shocked her; this display of... helplessness? If not exactly that, it was at the very least an admission that she lacked control. The realization led to another whimper, this one born of half surrender, half remorse for her own weakness. _The things this man could do to her with just a kiss..._

Her nine year old self would have called her _stupid_ and kicked her shins for it. Hard.

Her nearly six and ten year old self said she _was_ stupid, for worrying about what her nine year old self would be thinking when she ought to be concentrating on the fact that she was like to burn to death from her insides outward if she did not stay him and regain at least _some_ of her composure.

The girl suddenly thought of his leaving and she knew that if he was saying goodbye, then he had been given an assignment that would take him far and away, out of Braavos. He would be gone for a long time. _That_ thought was enough to quell the tight feeling that was forming in her belly; that insistent desire that was urging her to wrap her arms around him, push him backwards onto her mattress, and fall with him. All of that fervor, that unrelenting want that was building inside of her, was being tempered by her sorrow at his leaving and so she was finally able to break away from him. She averted her eyes from his face so that she could ignore the look of hunger there before it rendered her witless. She needed to ask her question and bronze eyes did not seek to aid her in that task.

"Where will you go, Jaqen?"

He gazed at her intently for a long time, memorizing her face, studying the shape of her lips, the fringe of her dark lashes, the ring of midnight blue around the pupils of her stormy eyes. He longed to tell her all, but he could not. The task that lay before her was too important to compromise and the distraction of his own mission might prove too great for her. He suspected that was why she had been given the Sweetsleep in the first place—to prevent her from foolishly trying to run and stow away on his ship if he somehow betrayed his vow to say nothing of the specifics of his task. So, for as much as he wanted her with him, he could not risk impeding her success or compromising her security. His apprentice was not yet a Faceless Man and her trials were paramount, or perhaps second only to her safety.

"Nowhere that need concern a girl," the Lorathi finally answered. "You need only know that a man goes to do his duty, and he will return to Braavos once he has served."

_Once he has made his lovely girl safe._

The acolyte thought of the last time her master had left. Eighteen moons had turned before he was seen again within the temple. That had seemed a very long time to her then. Now, it would be an eternity _._ Could she make do without him for that long, or even longer? She wasn't so sure that she could, and she felt a degree of self-loathing at the thought, deploring this sudden dependence, but that did not negate the truth of it. She whimpered again, and she could not even find the pride to be ashamed for it. Jaqen's face softened at the sound and he nearly clutched at his chest to assuage the painful, leaden feeling that had welled up within him at the sign of his lovely girl's distress. Though he had never endured it before, the assassin knew for a certainty what was happening to him as he pulled his apprentice to him and held her tightly against his aching chest.

_This is what it feels like when a heart is breaking,_ he thought. He wrapped his arms even more firmly around the girl then, pressing her cheek directly over his heart. The pain abated some and he kissed the top of her head. They were silent for a while, her listening to the steady thumping inside of his chest and him burying his nose in her hair, trying to absorb as much of her into his memory as possible; the smell of her, and the feel of her, and the sound of her soft breathing; all of this he relished with the urgency of a drowning man who breaks the surface of the water to fill his lungs one last time. Finally, the girl ended their silence with her quiet, tentative words.

"If you're leaving, don't you think... Should we... Shouldn't we be together?" she murmured against him.

"We are together," her master soothed. "A man will stay for as long as he can, until he must go."

"No, I mean..." she hesitated and pulled away from him, looking up into his eyes and biting her lip again. This piqued his curiosity. "I mean we should _be_ together. We should... _lay_ together."

He looked at her in surprise, searching her face.

_She does not understand what she is saying,_ he realized, his heart feeling as if it were painfully cracking once again at the look in her eyes. _She does not know what this means. Not really._

"Shh. There is time for all of that, lovely girl," Jaqen said, pulling her back into himself and burying one hand in her hair rather more desperately than he had intended.

"But there's _not_ ," the girl whispered, a little wildly. "You're leaving _now_ and there is no time at all." _I may never see you again,_ she did not add, because she knew she would choke on the words and because she did not want them to be true. _Everyone leaves me. I lose everyone._

She could not see his sad smile, pressed against him as she was, but she could feel it. She knew exactly how his face looked when she finished speaking.

"A man would not have his first time with a girl be reduced to desperate rutting on borrowed time in her acolyte's cell. A man would have you when you were truly ready."

"But... I think I am."

"No, sweet child. You are not," he told her, stroking her hair softly.

"But you could be gone for years, Jaqen," the apprentice reasoned, struggling to keep the desolation out of her voice.

"A man will move with the greatest haste he can and return to you soonest. But if a man must wait years for you, he will do so."

She swallowed hard.

"Do you not... am I not... _desirable_ to you?"

The Lorathi groaned.

"Oh, lovely girl," he choked hoarsely, clutching her to him harder. "There is nothing a man wants more in this world than you. _Nothing_."

She pulled away and looked at him, disbelief shining in her eyes, clearly accusing him of lying in order to spare her feelings. The assassin sighed and shook his head, his expression serious.

"My sweet, sweet Arya," Jaqen said then, piercing her with his gaze, burning bronze and fierce with his want, "a man will not do this thing here, _now_ , quickly and with desperation. Not with the sadness and worry that clings to you and that poison still in your blood. A man wishes to lay his lovely girl down with care and take his time. He wishes to show her what it is to love. He needs to have every inch of her body, from that stubborn furrowed brow down to the tips of her little toes. A man desires to use every part of himself to claim every part of her, unhurried, and he wishes to look upon her face to see that she truly understands what it is that he feels for her as he does this thing. A man cannot do this properly here and now, and he will not allow his lovely girl to settle for less."

_He wishes for you to understand what it is you are asking of him,_ he did not add, knowing it would pointlessly incense her. Time and time again, she had insisted she was not a child and did not require his protection, but against all reason, there was an innocence in her eyes when he looked there. When he saw it, he knew he could not do what it was she wanted. _What she thinks she wants,_ he amended. Not yet. The lack of time was only one reason, but it was the one he knew she would not challenge.

His apprentice blinked hard at his words, trying to clear the swimming sensation from her head; a sensation that had formed and then intensified as her master spoke. She could feel her face burning, and she did not know if it was the power of his gaze or what he had said to her that was to blame for it. She drew in a great breath and then blew it out, feeling more steady as she did.

"What if..." she started, her face screwing itself up into a look of almost anger. She was bracing herself against the darkness of her own thoughts. "What if you don't ever..."

He understood her then.

"When has a man failed to return to you, lovely girl?"

"Ships sink, Jaqen," she replied in low tones, a touch of exasperation in her voice as if his refusal to admit the potential dangers vexed her. "Ships break up on rocks and succumb to storms. Quarrels and arrows kill men, whether well-placed or errant. Disease and sickness can take you away without even a hint of violence near you. Steel and poison and a hangman's noose have ended the lives of countless men. _My mother and brother died at a feast, at the hands of men who had sworn their fealty, and not even a whole army could save them._ Outlaws ambush travelers. Horses throw riders..."

"A man promises to avoid unruly horses."

" _Jaqen!_ " she cried, feeling as if she might weep from frustration. "Death... comes. It comes! Unbidden or courted, it does not matter. To behave as if it cannot touch you does not steel you. It does not steel _me_."

The apprentice was chastising the master, accusing him of carelessness, but rather than contrition, he began to feel his own frustration at her lack of faith.

"Has a man not made it clear how far he is willing to..." His voice trailed off and he looked at Arya, his eyes almost blazing. She returned his gaze, trying to find some reassurance in it. Trying to see his certainty that he would return and borrow it so that she would not feel... _this._ This crushing apprehension and concern. This pressing worry. This unbearable despondency at the thought of his leaving.

Jaqen closed his eyes and swore softly in Lorathi, some colloquialism that was unfamiliar to her. He seemed to be saying something about the gods. _By all the gods? A man swears..._ _I bind myself? Or, I am bound?_ Opening his eyes, he grabbed her face roughly and then his lips were at hers, pressing, moving, trying to impart some physical sign of his promise; trying to make her believe. A feeling gnawed at him and he sought to relieve it by tasting her flesh, kissing her jaw, her ear, her neck. Suddenly, there was salt on his tongue and he realized then that she was crying. He groaned. He was making it worse, not better; worse for both of them, for the gnawing inside of him was only strengthening, devouring him from the inside out, and the flow of her tears became steadier as he tried to kiss them away; his breathing ragged against her cheeks and her eyes as he drug his bottom lip across her fair skin, tasting the salt, trying and failing to absorb all of her despair so that she could have peace and, knowing of her peace, he could find his own.

"By all the gods, I am yours," he whispered in Lorathi, his breath hot against her cheek, "and ever will be, come what may." He began to scrub at her skin, wiping her tears away with his thumbs, forcing her to look into his eyes. He continued speaking to her urgently, in his native tongue. "You must not worry. Arrows and outlaws and sickness equal nothing against my love for you. I will not allow death to part us. Do you understand me? Do you believe what I am saying, my love?"

Bronze eyes probed grey for understanding, seeking some outward display of her trust in him. After a minute, her face still troubled and wet with her silent tears, she nodded stiffly.

"I believe you," the girl whispered in her master's language, and then repeated in the common tongue, "I believe you."

He answered her trust with his own assurances, delivered in her language, "A man will come back to you. A man will find you, no matter where you may have wandered. This thing is not said lightly, lovely girl. This is a man's vow to you."

She finally nodded and Jaqen kissed her again, this time more tenderly.

"A girl will complete her trial while her master is away. You are more than capable of meeting any challenge that is presented. A man expects to find a healthy, whole, and completely lethal Faceless assassin upon his return."

"I'm sure you will," the girl returned with a small smile. "After all, I am your creature. You made me."

"No," the Lorathi disagreed. "A man did not _make_ you, lovely girl. He merely trained you."

"Yes, you trained me. And I became a capable assassin. So, isn't that the same thing?"

He thought of how the girl had named him, branding him and pulling from the nothingness that defined him a self which he could not deny. He recalled how it was _she_ who had made _him._

"No," Jaqen murmured, sounding certain. "No, it is not the same thing."

The Lorathi guided his apprentice back down to her mattress and covered her once again, smoothing her hair away from her forehead and looking down at her with unreadable eyes as he leaned over her.

"Tomorrow is important, sweet girl."

"Please don't say it, Jaqen," Arya begged, knowing he was going to encourage her to sleep now and that sleep would mean closing her eyes so that she could no longer see his face. Sleep would mean waking up to find him gone. Sleep would mean the beginning of a long and uncertain wait. "I don't want to say goodbye." And in that moment, she was a girl again, a little grey mouse, afraid to be abandoned; afraid to be alone; clinging to the only person she had left in this world.

He sighed and said a bit sadly, "But you must be ready to earn your face, and a man has duties, lovely girl."

"Must you really go? Now?"

"A girl understands about duty, yes?"

"Yes."

"And what did a girl promise her master about _her_ duty?" Jaqen asked.

"I will do my duty, whatever is asked," his apprentice answered compliantly, the resignation in her voice tearing at the heart of him.

He smiled at her reassuringly, seemingly satisfied with her answer, and said, "Just so. A man expects his lovely girl to remember her promise to him on the morrow, and every day after that."

The Lorathi reached for the girl's hand, pressing a hard kiss to the back of it. He then grasped it tightly between his own and she felt him press something cool and hard against her palm. She furrowed her brow and looked at him but Jaqen simply smiled. When he released her hand, she inspected the object he had slipped to her. It was an iron coin and upon seeing it, she instantly thought of the first time he had given her such a gift and her tears returned, even as she cursed her own sentimentality.

"Why?" was all she was able to say, wiping at her eyes with irritation.

"The last time a man offered you his coin, you found your way back to him," her master replied softly.

"You are the one leaving, Jaqen. You should have it. You should keep it for yourself."

"A man gave this to you long ago. It is yours."

"Long ago? Is this... This is _that_ coin? But, how? I gave it to a ship's captain to buy my passage to Braavos! That was _years_ ago!"

"Ternesio Terys, yes. Long ago, a man was able to offer this ship's captain something he wanted more than an iron coin. A man felt his lovely girl should one day have it again."

"What could he possibly want more than an iron coin?" the apprentice asked, holding the thing up and inspecting it in the candlelight. "You can buy _death_ with this. You can buy _life_."

"Just so."

"Jaqen, in all my time in the temple, I have never seen another one of these. They are not so common as I believed when I handed this over to Ternesio, are they?"

"They are few, and closely guarded," he admitted. "You would not see one lying about or carelessly displayed, no. A girl will soon earn her own, a man should think."

"But then... you should keep this one!" she insisted.

"A man will rest easier knowing that you have it, lovely girl. A man will know that no matter where you may find yourself, you will always have a way home."

The girl looked at her master in wonderment. She did not know what to say. She was touched by the effort he must have put into tracking down and securing the coin but she was also reeling from a strange and heavy sense of... recognition; the feeling that she could not escape her fate; that she had done all this before.

_And hadn't she?_

_If the day comes when you must find me again,_ he had said to her when she was Weasel, just a scrawny girl wondering what good was a coin that could not be used to buy a horse. _How foolish she had been then. So young. So stupid. She had not understood the power contained in that bit of dark iron. She had not understood what it meant that it had been given to her. Not then._

Now, though...

"Valar morghulis," she whispered, remembering when Jaqen had first taught her the phrase and clamping her fingers over the coin, clutching it so tightly that it hurt.

"Valar dohaeris, sweet girl," Jaqen whispered back, standing and meaning to take his leave of her. When he moved toward her door, the acolyte bolted up, flinging herself from her covers and flying toward him. As her master turned in surprise, the girl leapt into his arms and wrapped herself tightly around him. Her arms were almost crushing in their strength and her legs were pressing his hips as her feet hooked behind his thighs, refusing to release him.

"Please don't go! Don't go, don't go, don't go," she pled breathlessly, her words seeming to bleed one into another, her repeating murmurs like prayers delivered against his ear. "Stay with me, I need you! Don't go! Oh, _please..._ "

Her own desperation surprised her, though perhaps it shouldn't have, given her history of parting with those for whom she cared. Later, she would tell herself that all of this unseemly emotion, the begging, the tears, and the despair were somehow a side effect of the Sweetsleep. For now, though, she could not quiet herself. Something was erupting from within her like a geyser and she did not have the power to tamp it down; had nowhere to house such feelings anymore, her little box of emotions she did not care to feel over-full, its integrity failing. She could not stop herself from begging though her master tried his best to comfort her as he shushed her, kissing her face and rubbing her back with long strokes meant to soothe her.

_She was losing him. She had allowed herself to have something, to love someone, and now she was losing him._ The idea only increased the fervor of her choked and ardent imploring.

"Stay, Jaqen. Someone else can go. It doesn't have to be you. You can stay. Stay with me. Please! Please, please, please..."

The Lorathi pressed a soft, lingering kiss against her lips which served to quiet her. After a moment, he drew back and looked at her before speaking.

"A man cannot stay, no matter how he may wish to," her master said sadly. "A man must go, lovely girl."

The assassin finally managed to tear himself away from his apprentice but it was not without great pain.

_Love and Duty_.

He would do his duty; was doing his duty, though every cell in his body cried out for him to follow his heart as he pulled Arya's grasping arms and legs away from his body and set her gently back onto her own floor. Duty was not in his heart but his body and mind would obey nonetheless. Duty had won, but was this victory? Or surrender? Or desertion? He lifted his eyes to hers and sighed.

"Aqtam 'amala," he said, plunging her cell into darkness. He could not stand to see the look in her eyes one more second. Leaving her was his duty and would guarantee her safety, but it felt too much like betrayal when she looked at him like that.

As he opened the door and she saw his dark silhouette outlined in the flickering torchlight from the acolytes' passageway, Arya cursed her own weakness and the way it made her hurt on the inside as if at her very core, she was nothing more than a bruised and beaten thing.

_You always knew love was weakness,_ her little voice reminded her then. _You cannot pretend to be shocked by it now._

She watched her master step into the corridor and thought to herself that Jaqen H'ghar would always value duty above all else.

As he turned to see her dimly lit figure standing in the middle of her cell, watching him leave, he thought to himself that he would never value anything as highly as he valued Arya Stark, and his duty to protect her.

Slowly, the door closed behind the assassin and his apprentice was left in the darkness, alone.

* * *

When Jaqen strode down the acolytes' corridor to the stairwell that would carry him up to his own floor, he walked by the black and white tomcat that prowled the temple, giving it a passing glance as the feline lazily licked at one paw and drug it over his ear, grooming himself. As Jaqen left the animal behind, the cat fixed the assassin with his disturbing stare until the master entered the stairwell. As the stairwell door slammed shut behind Jaqen, the cat paused briefly, and then returned to his grooming. For his part, the assassin continued on to his chamber where he meant to pack the few things he intended to bring with him on his trip to Westeros. After that, he reasoned he should have plenty of time to walk to the Purple Harbor and settle himself aboard _Titan's Daughter_ before Ternesio Terys meant to cast off, departing ahead of the dawn.

After stuffing his few belongings into a leather satchel and strapping on his sword belt and longsword, the Lorathi glanced around his cell one last time and then extinguished his candle. He stepped out into the corridor and was immediately greeted by two masters: his handsome brother and his tiny sister.

"Brother," the waif greeted, her expression serious. He inclined his head slightly to her in respectful acknowledgment and then looked at the his brother, noting the Myrish man wore his typical sardonic look as he clicked the heels of his boots and bowed to the Lorathi assassin with comical formality.

"Have you two come to see a man off?" Jaqen asked.

"No, brother," the waif replied, placing her small hand on the Lorathi's arm. "We have come to take you to the principal elder. He wishes to speak with you."

"I wonder what it could be about?" the handsome assassin mused in a rather animated tone. He looked as if he knew _exactly_ what it could be about.

"Is there a reason both of you were sent to deliver this message?"

"We were not sent to deliver a message," the waif said, casting a disapproving glance at the handsome man. "We were sent to deliver _you_."

Jaqen noted then that his brother's hands rested casually on two blade hilts at either hip; a longsword and a dirk.

"Did you expect a man to offer much resistance?" the Lorathi asked, his eyes still on the handsome man's hands.

"One can never be too careful," the Myrish assassin responded, and he smiled as if he meant it as a jape, but his eyes held no evidence of mirth in them and his grip tightened slightly on his hilts. "Shall we go, then?"

Jaqen's face took on a decidedly grim set, and he nodded, allowing himself to be led down the corridor and toward the stairwell, where they descended to the lowest level of the temple and entered the council chamber.

"Wait here," the waif instructed, leaving the two men in the chamber together as she walked back through the doorway and into the corridor. Jaqen heard the distinct sound of an exterior bolt being moved into place and he looked at his _handsome_ brother then, eyebrows raised. The Myrish rogue just shrugged and dropped into his regular seat at the long council table, his posture casual, placing his boot heels on the table and leaning his chair back on two legs.

As he examined his brother's relaxed pose, the Lorathi assassin did not bother to hide his distaste. Jaqen heard the irritating sound of a tongue clucking in mock-admonishment as he took his own seat across from his brother.

"You do a very poor job of ruling your face, brother," the smirking master said, crossing his arms over his chest as he continued to lean back. "No wonder your apprentice has had such trouble mastering her own. It's such a shame she wasn't given to me to train."

"A man believes she was."

"Well, yes, but not until the very end. The damage had been done by then."

Jaqen's expression darkened.

"In what way do you think a girl was damaged by her master?" the Lorathi asked, his voice low and dangerous.

"You mistake me, brother," the handsome man assured Jaqen, his face a mask of insincere sincerity. "I meant the damage done to you."

Jaqen's brother crooked up one side of his mouth then and looked at the bronze-eyed assassin, watching for his reaction. The Lorathi merely looked back at him with an unreadable expression. The two stared at each other like that for a long while.

Finally, the door creaked open and the Lorathi's mask melted away, replaced with an amused smirk at the sound. In a place where acolytes and masters trained endlessly to make themselves invisible and unheard, it was the most delightful absurdity that the door to the council chamber should protest so loudly at its own opening. In through the door walked his master, his expression mostly bland, but the Lorathi thought he could detect something behind the false blue of the elder's piercing eyes. _Disappointment? Or, perhaps it was regret._

Jaqen was suddenly filled with a sense of dread.

"Leave us," the Kindly Man commanded, his words directed at the master who sat with his heels perched upon the council table. The handsome man nodded, setting his leaning chair to rights and swiftly leaving the room. When he had closed the door behind him, the elder turned his gaze back to his former apprentice and spoke again.

"We have much to discuss, brother."

* * *

For a long time, the Cat merely stood rooted in the spot where her master had left her, staring into the darkness toward her door, fixated on the thin line of light that peeked from beneath it. She watched for it to darken or disappear, an indication that Jaqen had changed his mind and returned to her. She knew he would not, but she watched for it anyway. _Because she had allowed herself to become soft. Because she had allowed herself to indulge in the weakness of hope._

_Stupid girl,_ she thought, but she kept watching.

When her legs began to ache, she returned to her bed and sat swathed in her linens and woolen blanket, sitting in the middle of the mattress and hanging her head, alternating between thinking of Jaqen and what his departure would mean for her and trying _not_ to think of him or what his departure would mean for her. She was certain that she would not sleep, but like most people who think such things, she was wrong and eventually drifted off, though it was surely hours later. After she closed her eyes and her breathing became quiet and even, she was once again in Winterfell.

The girl found herself pressing her hands against the smooth, stone front of her Aunt Lyanna's tomb, feeling the chill radiate off of it. The silence of the crypts was profound and it served to make her own breathing seem as loud as the beat of horse hooves. She knelt then, resting her knees in the silvery folds of her voluminous and trailing skirts, pressing her ear to the sepulcher, listening intently. After a moment, she could hear it. _The music._

She turned her head quickly, looking past the silent, dark knight who served as her shield (a necessary nod to convention, for no one who truly knew her thought she that she had need of a shield and indeed, the girl herself had shielded Ser Gendry on more than one occasion), her eyes coming to rest upon her father's tomb. Lord Stark was sitting atop it, looking at her solemnly. He appeared to her just as he had the day they had left Winterfell together for the last time. Stalwart, strong, and vital, her father was as imposing now, ensconced in these wintery crypts, as he had seemed to the wild girl of nine years who had worshiped him. As his daughter met his eyes, he nodded to her but did not speak. He seemed to be affirming what it was that she was thinking; encouraging her instinct.

_Prodding her to obey her gut._

"Your hammer, Gendry," she commanded hoarsely.

The towering knight seemed startled to hear her voice in the quiet of the crypts.

"M'lady?" he asked, addressing her as he did only when they were alone. It was an old habit, and one rife with secret meaning.

She pushed up from the ground with effort, her skirts now weighted with creeping ice which pulled at her as if to force her back down upon her knees.

"Your hammer!" she repeated, more insistently as tendrils of frost crept up her bodice and across her bared shoulders, climbing up her neck and into her hair. The cold had never bothered her, but she felt it deeply then and it seemed to be freezing her bones, making her movements possible only through agonizing effort. She was filled with the urgent need to complete her task before she became completely encased in ice, incapable of movement.

The knight seemed unsure of what he was meant to do and his queen wheeled around impatiently, wrenching the heavy war hammer from his grasp. She turned and swung, her arms vibrating up to her shoulders as the flat of the hammer hit the front of Lyanna's tomb. The movement caused the layer of frost and ice upon her shoulders and neck to shatter and send tiny diamond shards raining down upon the ground where they struck and bounced and tinkled like thousands of delicate, silver bells.

"What are you doing?" Gendry demanded, surprised. He reached for her, trying to take the weapon back but she struck the stone again before he could recover it. "Arya, what are you doing?"

"What I have to," she answered without looking at him.

The girl gritted her teeth against the pain caused by her hair turning to ice around her scalp. She became aware of a weight there and lifted one hand to explore, discovering a barbed circlet frozen to the crown of her head. As she traced its jagged shape with her hand, she pricked her finger on one of its sharp points. Arya gasped, jerking her hand away from the odious thing and studying the wound as a single drop of blood oozed from the cut and grew fat and heavy, falling to the ground. She flinched when the crimson droplet splattered against the cold stones beneath her feet and froze, taking the shape of an icy, red starburst.

"Are you alright?" Gendry asked with concern, snatching her hand up to examine it.

The girl did not answer the knight but merely looked up at his face and asked her own question.

"Do you not hear it?" she asked. "The harp?"

"Your grace, we are too far from the revelry," he answered carefully, his features marked by his confusion at her words. "The music does not reach the crypts."

The queen sighed, turning from her shield and swinging again at the stone front of the tomb. Again and again and again she battered the sepulcher until the echo of her efforts filled the crypts with deafening thunder. At first, pulverized dust and tiny chips flew from the slab and slowly obliterated the engraving there. The first to go was Lyanna's name, and then her nameday and the date of her death, and then some platitude meant to convey how dear she had been to her family. It meant little and less in the face of the maddening music; the sweet, high notes of the harp that played in Arya's head and intertwined with the sounds of the war hammer hitting stone, creating a rhythmic drum beat to underlie the melody which only the girl could hear.

The engravings on the tomb were no more. The characters which meant _Winter is coming_ endured, however, as legible as they were before the girl began her work.

The echo of footsteps approaching stayed Arya's hand and she turned, looking to see who intruded upon them now. The towering knight turned as well, his hand dropping to his sword hilt in an instinctive way. The girl strained her eyes, peering into the blackness past tombs and statues. After a moment, she could make out a hulking white shape. _Ghost._ And on his heels came his master.

Jon wore all black, as was his habit, though it was no longer required of him. He looked very fine if a bit sober. The color suited him.

"Little sister," the Northman spoke as he approached her, "why are you doing this?"

The girl twisted around further and looked upon her father's face once again. Eddard Stark nodded his head at her, just has he had before.

"Because I must," she replied, turning back to her work, raising the war hammer and striking at the tomb.

"If you do this, it all changes," Jon murmured sadly. "Everything will change."

"Everything always does," Arya muttered, landing another great blow that rang in her ears and rattled her bones. Ghost lay down beside her as if lending his support. Jon said nothing further and stood back, side by side with Gendry, watching her work. The girl continued to hammer steadily at the stone front of Lyanna Stark's tomb.

After several more strikes, the first cracks appeared. Seeing them renewed Arya's vigor and she delivered three more hard blows in rapid succession. The front of the tomb crumbled, revealing a heavy blackness within. The strains of music remained faint and so the girl knelt again, leaning her head into the now open vault, concentrating on the sound, trying to determine its origin.

"Careful, Arya," Jon warned, stepping toward her.

Further and further she leaned, until she felt herself being pulled into the tomb as if by invisible hands. Her brother cried out to her, reaching for her, grasping her arm, but it was too late; she had too much momentum and she felt herself slip from Jon's grasp, all at once. Suddenly, she was falling, through the hole she had created with Gendry's hammer, and then further, down and down and down; impossibly downward, on and on.

Arya hurtled through utter blackness, utterly alone. That sense of falling enveloped her, that mixture of terror and exhilaration, and for a moment, it was all she knew, until it reminded her of something; something she had once had and then lost. _The feeling of loss then was so vast and so deep, she nearly cried out from the pain of it._

Gradually, light began to filter into the black space through which she was plummeting and the darkness turned to the grey of a clear night during a full moon. She came to rest in a bed of snow; was set down upon a bed of feathers. Her silver-grey ice dress gone, she felt her frozen flesh begin to thaw under the searing heat from the kisses of hungry lips and the urgent kneading of insatiable fingers. She opened her eyes to see a face so near to hers that she could not focus her gaze properly to make out the features of it; so close to hers that it nearly touched hers. And then it did touch hers, the lips brushing over her mouth, her chin, her cheek, her jaw. Hands caressed her neck, spreading warmth over her and through her. She slowly became aware that eyes were boring into hers, violet eyes, radiating heat and desire and wonder. Tangled silver-blonde hair hung down, caressing her face and when she noted it, her little voice said, _Rhaegar_ , because although she had never seen the Prince of Dragonstone, indeed, had not yet been born when he had died on the Trident, she had heard him described often enough to know that this must be him. Why was Rhaegar Targaryen kissing her? Why was she lying naked under him on a feather bed, melting beneath his touch? Why did she... How could she... What made her feel the way she felt then?

"My love, my love, my love," the silver prince murmured and he was moving over her and she gasped and closed her eyes, confused but not caring that she was confused because she felt... _oh..._ she _felt_ again, after being frozen for an eternity. After bearing loss after loss and sealing off her heart behind a wall of ice, she had something again, and it warmed her and melted her and made her _want_ again.

"My love," he repeated while she dropped her head back, and as his mouth moved over her flesh, she arched her neck and breast, closing her eyes.

"Aegon," she breathed.

_Not a prince, but a king._

Her king and husband.

She heard a different voice in her ear then and she knew it as well as her own. That deep tone wrought a chill from her and made her sudden ability to once again experience _feeling_ seem like a most grievous betrayal.

"Lovely girl," it said. "What have you done?"

* * *

The Cat awoke with a start, her heart fluttering in her chest, her breaths rapid and shallow. Her dream was fading slowly but she knew that in it, she had somehow hurt Jaqen, or broken trust with him. Even though she knew it was only a dream, the thought disturbed her and the uneasy feeling lingered as she lay in bed, waiting for her pounding pulse to return to normal.

_Aegon,_ she thought, mulling the name she had uttered near the end of her dream, before she had awakened. She had never seen this alleged Aegon VI, but it wasn't difficult for a mind to conjure a provocative image of a Targaryen. Amethyst eyes, a lean form, long silvery hair—anyone bearing those features could be almost automatically assumed to be a dragon. Who knew what the real Aegon looked like, though? If he even _was_ the real Aegon. His mother was a Martell, after all. He might be dark and dangerous, more like the issue of Dorne than the fair stock of Valyria. Why was she dreaming of him, anyway? Why were they... _together_ like that? Was it because Jaqen had refused her clumsy advances on the previous night? Was she exacting some small and unconscious revenge for his rejection? What did it mean?

_It doesn't mean anything, you idiot,_ the acolyte chastised herself. _It was just a dream; some nonsensical product of exhaustion and Sweetsleep and sorrow._

The girl sighed, her sadness acute and pressing.

_Sorrow._

She thought of her master then, allowing herself to remember how he had left her in the night, bound for some place that he would not name, to do something for the order that he would not reveal. A heaviness descended over her mind and heart and she pinched her lips into a thin line, willing her tears to stop before they started. After drawing a few sharp breaths through her nose, she arose, still wearing the acolyte's robe she had dressed in for the feast. She smoothed it down, combed her hair with her fingers before braiding it, and left her cell, bound for the Bear's chamber. She wanted whatever comfort her friend could provide and knew he would understand what it was she was feeling just then. He might well be the only one who could.

To her surprise, however, the Bear's cell was empty.

_Where could he have gone so early?_ she wondered, and then thought maybe it wasn't as early as she had believed. She had been up so late that perhaps she had overslept. A quick trip to the small hall proved that theory wrong. It was still dark, the candles unlit, and the table was bare. She made her way to the kitchen and found Umma working, making dough for biscuits and frying bacon and sardines.

"Has the Cat decided to spend her last day as an acolyte helping an old woman with her chores?" the cook asked in uncharacteristically playful tones.

Thinking the labor might prove to be a welcome distraction, the girl began working alongside the woman.

"What has you up before the sun, little Cat?"

The girl shrugged, saying simply, "A dream woke me."

"Ah, dreams. They can sometimes be troublesome," the old woman observed. "Though often, they are not as troublesome as our realities, eh my girl?"

The Cat considered this, unsure which was more bothersome to her just then: the disturbing feeling of unfaithfulness that her dream had left her with or the reality of Jaqen's departure. As she thought about it, she decided that perhaps the latter had led to the former, but she also felt like her master's departure wasn't quite real. It might take a few days of not seeing him before his absence would truly to sink in, she supposed. She hoped that when it did, she had dreams to distract her which were more pleasant and less confusing than the one from which she had just awoken, barely able to breathe.

The two women worked mostly in silence after that, though the Braavosi cook tried to draw the girl into conversation every now and again. The Cat found that she just wasn't interested in small talk or japing, however, and so she answered in shrugs and terse responses that did not invite replies. Once the breakfast was finished, the girl grabbed a biscuit and a piece of nearly-burnt bacon and ate the food in silence while sitting on a stool in the corner of the kitchen. She did not wish for company then and so she did not head to the small hall, but instead, finished eating and took her leave of Umma, meaning to throw some knives in the range room. As she moved past the pool in the main chamber, she crossed paths with the temple cat. The girl bent to stroke him along his back and the animal arched into her touch, purring in contentment.

"At least you're not leaving me," she said quietly. The cat mewled.

"Little wolf, all men must serve," said a solemn voice. "Someday, it will be you who is doing the leaving."

The girl lifted her gaze to see the handsome man, and he was speaking to her without his usual japing tones.

"What do you know about leaving? Or being left?" the acolyte asked bitterly as she stood. The cat circled her once, rubbing against her legs before he moved off languidly, likely toward the kitchen to seek a bowl of cream from the cook. "Who have you ever cared about leaving behind?"

"Believe it or not, my girl, there was a time when it pained me to be parted from my brother. We were once very close, you see."

"You never say which brother," the girl replied somewhat testily. "You have many."

"Only one who was ever truly a friend, though. The same one whose departure now torments you."

"But not you," the Cat observed. "I rather think you enjoy the idea of him leaving now."

"Oh? And why do you think that?"

"Because with him gone, there is no one to challenge you. You become the most elite; the best of what is left. With him gone, there is no shadow cast over you. You can finally shine brightest of all the stars."

The handsome master laughed, but there was no joy in the sound.

"Even half a world away, no one outshines the Lorathi," he muttered. "My brother casts a very long shadow, little wolf."

"Just so," the girl agreed with a sigh.

The assassin regarded the girl for a moment and, noting her pale face and the darkness beneath her eyes, inquired after her sleep.

"It was poor," the acolyte admitted. "I have... dreams."

"Do you?"

She nodded.

"Perhaps after you break your fast, you should rest, then," he suggested. "You will have no duties until... later. You will need to stay in the temple today, however. No traipsing about town."

"I already broke my fast. I was up early, and helped Umma in the kitchen."

"Well, then, perhaps a walk in the garden? A little sunlight on your face may do you good. You can tell me about these dreams."

"I was going to the range room," she started, but she tilted her head and narrowed her eyes then, studying the master's handsome face, "but perhaps... a walk in the courtyard would be best."

The master smiled and the girl took the assassin's proffered arm. They set off together toward the garden door at the rear of the temple.

* * *

The Kindly Man had taken his seat at the head of the council table but whether out of habit or as a purposeful reminder of his place in the order, as well as a reminder of Jaqen's place, there at his master's right hand, the Lorathi assassin was not certain.

"I have tried to save you, brother, but you have not made it easy to do so," the elder began.

"Save a man? From what?"

"From your own folly." The Kindly Man's tone added the _of course_ to his statement without the need to actually speak the phrase.

Jaqen looked at his master and considered his next words carefully.

"A man's folly is his alone," he finally said. "The girl deserves none of your blame. You should not punish her."

"Shouldn't I?"

The younger man shook his head, saying, "She has done nothing wrong. It was she who urged a man to... be _mindful_ of your wishes."

"Unsuccessfully, I see."

The younger man resisted the urge to drop his eyes from the elder's and instead, held his emotionless gaze steadily.

"Disobedience has consequences," the principal elder reminded the assassin, "as she is well aware."

"Yes, and a man must bear those consequences," the Lorathi agreed. "But a girl..."

"Just so," the elder interrupted, waving his hand in a dismissive manner. "Rest easy, brother. It is not my intention to punish the girl. In fact, I mean to give her a choice."

The way the words were spoken did not impart any relief to the Lorathi.

"A choice?" Jaqen prompted.

"Yes," his master replied, a hint of a smile showing on his lips. Jaqen felt as if he were sinking in icy water at the sight of it and thought it would have been better to see the elder in a rage, spewing threats and vowing retribution than to see that _almost-smile_ on his face. The Lorathi drew in a slow breath. He was torn; a part of him did not want to know and a part of him was irresistibly compelled to ask.

"What choice?"

"The same choice you were given, brother," the Kindly Man replied. "The choice between love and duty."

* * *

The handsome man and the Cat walked arm-in-arm through the garden for a while in silence, the girl occasionally tilting her head up to catch the warm rays of morning sun that were just peeking over the courtyard wall.

"Your wan appearance surprised me," the master confided. "I should have thought you would have rested very well last night, all things considered."

"Oh? Why is that?"

She wondered if he would admit any knowledge of the Sweetsleep in her wine.

"Acolytes often do, the night before their trial," was all he offered.

"I find that surprising."

He arched an eyebrow at her, awaiting her explanation.

"Nerves," the girl said. "You would think nerves would disturb their rest."

"Is that what disturbed yours? Nerves?"

"No, I told you. I had a dream."

"That's exceedingly strange," the handsome master replied, "because so did I. In my dream, a very beautiful girl fell asleep at her supper. A certain assassin carried her to her cell and did not return to his own chamber for a very long time."

The girl snorted at the master's overt flattery. _Very beautiful girl, indeed. Did he mean to put her off her guard?_

"Beautiful girls and assassins doing who knows what behind closed doors? Yes, that sounds exactly like the sort of dream I would expect you to have," the Cat scoffed.

"I wondered if it was the same sort of dream which disturbed your sleep, little wolf."

They stopped walking and the girl perched herself on the edge of the fountain wall, stretching her legs out before her. The handsome assassin stood in front of her, looking down at her face.

"No. My dream was rather more... confusing. And it lacked the presence of any assassins."

_That's not quite true,_ her little voice reminded her. _He was there. At the end._

_Just his voice,_ the girl thought. _It's not the same._

"More confusing than mine? I am not so sure," the master said. "I found myself very confused as to why this beautiful girl and this experienced assassin would risk the wrath of their order by flagrantly disobeying the wishes of the principal elder."

"Didn't you say that in your dream, the girl was sleeping?" the girl inquired innocently. "How could a sleeping girl be accused of disobeying anything? Unless she was ordered to stay awake, that is."

The handsome man smiled then, but the look was more predatory than amused.

"So you're saying that the girl, in this instance, is free from any blame?" the master pressed. "She was the hapless victim of this scheming assassin?"

"What blame?" the girl asked in her best approximation of bewilderment. "A victim of what, exactly?"

"Well, I guess I'm not sure. What sort of treachery could a unscrupulous man engage in behind closed doors, I wonder?"

The Cat stood and moved very near to the master, lifting her chin in challenge.

"What are you implying?" she asked him softly.

"Implying?" the handsome man asked, feigning confusion. "Why, nothing at all, my girl. I'm merely discussing my own disturbing dream."

The apprentice huffed slightly in irritation. She squared her shoulders and fixed the master with her stare.

"I believe I've had quite enough fresh air," she said haughtily. "I think I'll head back into the temple now."

She made to walk away but the handsome man placed a hand on her shoulder, stopping her.

"Wait," he directed gently, sighing. "Wait, don't go."

As the assassin spoke, her pleas to Jaqen the night before rang in her ears and that, coupled with the rare earnestness of the handsome man's voice, stopped her from leaving. She looked back over her shoulder at him and waited.

"Come," he said simply, taking the girl's hand and leading her further along the garden path. He led her to one of the stone benches beneath a stand of fig trees on the far side of the courtyard. He sat and then tugged on her arm until she acquiesced and sat next to him.

"You were meant to be sleeping," the handsome man said in a low voice, checking the position of the sun in the sky. "In fact, you should only now be awakening."

"I gathered that, but why?"

"To be certain that you would still be here this morning. To be certain that you did not trail after your master like a lost puppy."

The apprentice mulled over his explanation. She supposed it made sense, though in truth, she had not considered leaving the temple to follow Jaqen on his mission any more than she had considered leaving when the Bear had suggested it to her. She meant what she told her brother; she intended to complete her trial and take her vows.

"Obviously, you spoke to him last night," the assassin began. The girl started to speak over him, protesting halfheartedly, but the look on the master's face told her how little he thought of her denials. "What I don't understand is _how_."

The Cat bit her lip. Her companion smirked at the gesture and she stiffened, releasing the flesh from between her teeth, undecided as to whether she should reveal the reason behind her seemingly inexplicable consciousness following the feast. Finally, she determined that there was no gain in denying the handsome man his answers.

"The Sweetsleep had been diluted significantly, and then I only drank a few sips of the wine anyway."

"How..."

"An error," she interrupted. "Or, an incomplete task, you might say. But it seems that it was a mistake that proved rather fortuitous."

"I'm not so sure about that, little wolf."

The girl looked forlorn, and said quietly, "We just said goodbye. It was nothing more than that. Would the order begrudge me an innocent farewell? Have you ever been denied that?"

"You are not me," the assassin answered cryptically.

"It was not necessary," the girl told him. "The Sweetsleep, I mean. I would never have left. He would have never _allowed_ me to leave."

The master nodded, seemingly in agreement, commenting, "Yes, we should all be so dedicated to our duty as my brother is."

The girl found that she could not accurately gauge the sincerity of the assassin's statement but she reassured her companion that she understood her role in the order.

"You need not worry for me. I will do my duty."

"Are you so sure, my girl?"

"Aren't you pleased to hear it?" the Cat wondered.

The handsome man looked at her for a long time, his expression grave. Finally, he said, "I don't know."

* * *

The Cat noted that the midday meal was even more poorly attended than the previous one. The waif was there, as was the lordling. The Bear was still missing. The handsome man had left her in the garden earlier in the morning and she had not seen him since. There was one priest present as well as three of the younger acolytes, including Loric. The Cat did not see Syrio among them, though, and so inquired after him, a little nonplussed at his absence.

"I haven't seen him all day," Loric revealed. "I suppose he might have gone back to Brusco's, though he didn't mention it at the feast last night."

"Was that the last time you saw him?" the girl asked the Myrish boy.

"Yes," he replied. "Of course, it was the last time I saw you, too, until just now. Maybe he'll wander in later."

"Maybe," she said, but she was not convinced. An uneasy feeling settled in her gut.

_Where is everyone?_ she wondered.

She finished her meal and took her leave, thinking to search the temple for the little pot boy. Her plans were thwarted when she crossed paths with the Kindly Man just as she exited the small dining hall.

"Where are you off to, child?" the elder inquired, his face and voice radiating benevolence.

"I... I'm looking for Syrio."

"Oh, no need," the Kindly Man assured her. "I've sent him with your brother to train for the day. We must be mindful of how we spend our time, mustn't we?"

As usual, the girl could not tell if the principal elder simply meant exactly what he said or if his words were colored with a subtle undertone. At a loss for an appropriate response, she simply nodded in agreement.

"When he is not training with Brusco, I feel that it is important for him to be doing something productive," the elder continued.

"Which brother did you send him with?" the girl asked.

The principal elder regarded her with a hint of amusement.

"Does it matter?" he inquired.

_It might_ , she thought, _because if you don't answer me, you might be lying._

"No, I was just wondering. I... had looked for the Bear earlier and couldn't find him."

"Just so," the Kindly Man agreed. "He is exactly the brother to whom I referred. He has taken your young protégé to the Purple Harbor to learn three new things."

She could not tell if the elder was being completely truthful. He was too much a master of his own face. If Syrio were truly with the Bear, he would be safe, she did not doubt, and as the Bear was also missing from the temple, she supposed it was likely to be an honest answer.

"Well, then, I suppose I no longer need to find him," the girl finally said.

"No, indeed," the elder remarked. He paused a moment and studied the girl before speaking again. "I have been told that you did not sleep well last night, child."

The Cat hid her surprise at his words, and also her vexation at the handsome man.

_He should learn to keep his bloody mouth shut._

"Nightmares," the girl muttered.

"I was most sorry to hear this, as it is very important that you be at your best for your task tonight."

"I assure you, I will be ready," the acolyte vowed.

"Still, I think you should go now and rest in your chamber. I will send someone after you when it is time."

"Thank you, master," she said appreciatively. "Valar morghulis."

"Valar dohaeris, child."

The Cat turned to leave but the Kindly Man seemed to suddenly remember something he had wanted to tell her. His voice stopped her.

"Oh! Yes, I had nearly forgotten. I spoke with your master late last night. Or, I suppose it is more precise to say I spoke with him early this morning, before he left on his journey."

The girl raised her eyebrows, her look one of interest which did not hint at the way her heart had begun to pound at the mention of Jaqen.

"He expressed his confidence in you, and his regret that he could not be here for this final task. I thought you might like to know that."

She bowed her head slightly in appreciation before leaving to do as she was bid by the elder.

* * *

The Bear and the Rat explained again to Syrio what his role would be during the Cat's trial as they walked along the docks.

"You must remain quiet," the Rat reiterated.

"I know!" the young boy said, exasperated. "You told me already!"

"He just wants to make sure you don't forget," the Bear told the pot boy soothingly, patting at Syrio's dark curls in the way Olive had often done.

"I won't forget," Syrio assured the Lyseni. "I'm not stupid. Are you sure I'll be able to see?"

"You'll have a very _special_ place," the Rat answered. "You'll be able to see and hear everything, don't you worry! Just as long as you _stay quiet._ "

The little boy groaned, repeating, "I know, I know!"

The trio walked in silence for a few minutes, but the pot boy apparently could not stand to remain quiet for so long. He was having difficulty containing his excitement at being allowed to witness the Cat earning her face.

"The Cat is Mattine's friend," the young boy told the acolytes. "Mattine saved me."

"So you keep saying," the Rat replied with irritation, rolling his eyes.

It was not the first time Syrio had related that bit of information. It was not the second or third time, either. Still, for the love Olive bore her younger half-brother, the Bear remained patient, treating the boy gently.

"When can we go?" the pot boy asked.

"Not for a while yet," the large Lyseni replied. "We still have an errand."

The Bear scanned the ships in port until he spotted the one he sought. He led his companions toward it then.

"I'm bored," the pot boy complained.

The rat-faced boy looked as if he might strike the young lad but the Bear held up hand to stay his brother, the gesture a plea for indulgence.

"How about if my brother and I teach you a game? We can play it after we finish our errand. It will help pass the time while we wait."

"What kind of game?" Syrio wanted to know.

"It's called the lying game."

"Alright," the young boy agreed. "Show me."

* * *

When the Cat left the Kindly Man, she had intended to head straight for her cell to rest before her looming task. _Earning her face._ She tried not to think on it too much, knowing that she would not understand her challenge fully until she was confronted with it, but she was having trouble finding the _stillness_ she craved. It seemed as if it had been many moons since her mind was untroubled by intrigues and problems and sorrow. When Jaqen had left for Westeros nearly two years ago, all she had been left with were her duty, her training obligations, and some very rare wolf dreams. She had mostly kept to herself then, interacting chiefly with the Kindly Man, the waif, and Umma, so she hadn't had friends to bother with and she certainly hadn't... _been in love._ When Jaqen left her in Braavos the first time, he had left a self-sufficient assassin-in-training. This time, though... This time, he had left her in chaos, and she felt as if she were bearing the burden of all the troubles in the world.

Instead of taking the familiar path to her own chamber, the girl found herself in the masters' corridor. The passageway was as silent as the grave and she moved down it without the least bit of noise, determined not to give herself away. The apprentice did not wish to answer the questions her presence would give rise to; was not even sure herself why she was there, anyway. She arrived at Jaqen's door and paused, listening. She didn't know what she was listening for, really, but she did it nonetheless. She knew he was gone. The Cat supposed she had hoped to hear rustling inside the chamber to indicate that her master had not left after all. Or, that he had, but had changed his mind before his ship could set sail and returned to the temple (returned to _her_ ). There was no such auditory evidence, however, and so she carefully pushed the door open and let herself into the empty room.

Sunlight streamed through the small, high window over Jaqen's bed. The linens and blanket had been stripped from the mattress and were nowhere in sight. She walked over to the trunk at the foot of the bed and threw open the lid. A couple of blouses, a pair of breeches, and a cloak were all the remained. The girl gathered that the rest had been packed. He was no longer there, and without him, this was just a room; nothing special. She had no reason to linger. She took a last look around and then left, this time arriving at her intended destination without any detours.

Once in her own cell, the girl exchanged her robe for her Jaqen's grey blouse, reasoning that since she had several hours in which to rest, she might as well be comfortable doing it. She did not articulate to herself that she also wished to be reminded of her master, but she did not need to. The blouse still smelled faintly of cloves and as she pulled it over her head, she let out an abbreviated groan. She did not, however, allow herself to cry, though she felt as if she certainly could without much provocation.

_Tears are of no use, you fool,_ she told herself. _You'd do better to sleep._

She crawled under her covers and curled up, intending to nap. Though she surely would have found sleep sooner had her master been there to wrap her in his arms, she still managed to fall asleep eventually. When she did, she discovered she was looking through Nymeria's eyes.

"Do you see her, Thoros?" Gendry asked the Red priest as the two men sat staring into a fire. The wolf watched quietly, sitting across the flames from the pair.

"I see many things in my fires," the ragged man answered. "Perhaps I see her among them, though I'd hardly know her now. This is no scrawny urchin who you wrestled on a forge floor, Ser."

"I know."

The priest raised his brows as if questioning the knight, but he said nothing.

"She's coming, isn't she," Gendry said, and it was more of an excited statement than a question. "I've dreamed about it, and it was so real that I know you must see it too."

"Perhaps she is even here now," Thoros replied, looking deep into Nymeria's eyes then. _Her_ eyes.

"You sound like the ghost of High Heart!" the knight laughed. "Be serious, Thoros. Tell me what you have seen."

"Why do you willingly blind yourself?" the priest asked him, giving Nymeria a wink before he turned to face the dark knight.

"Why do you always speak in riddles?" Gendry countered. "Just tell me."

The red priest regarded the dark knight's earnest face for a moment and then asked, "What is she to you, really?"

Gendry seemed taken aback at the question and hesitated before he spoke.

"I... I just need to know, is all. I just do."

Thoros heaved a heavy sigh before he turned from the large man and gazed into the fire, the orange-red tongues reflected in his eyes as they grew wider and his expression grew more slack.

"She will come," the priest finally said, snapping his eyes away from the flames to look at the large knight, "though I do not know if you will have the happy reunion you seek."

Gendry's expression blanched and he demanded to know what Thoros meant by his words.

"Only this, boy. Do not repeat history. Make your own path and be sure you do not walk in the footsteps of another. This land has had enough of war."

The knight tried to get the priest to elaborate on his meaning but Thoros simply dismissed him and refused to speak of it further. Gendry finally gave up and stalked off, Nymeria at his side. Those he passed could hear him muttering about _bloody riddles_ and _thrice-damned priests_ all the while. Arya watched it unfold through her wolf eyes.

A tapping (which eventually turned to a pounding) at her door pulled her from her dreams of Westeros and the girl groggily bade her visitor enter as she lit a candle to chase away the shadows. Her door creaked open and in walked the Bear.

"Get dressed, sister," the large boy said solemnly. "It is time."

* * *

_**Reminder-**_ Mumford and Sons (without her I'm lost but my love don't fade away)

_**Stay-**_ Rhianna

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A word about song choice: I particularly like these two songs together in this moment, "Reminder" describing Jaqen's feelings about the farewell and "Stay" describing Arya's. The first song seems like the way a mature or world-weary man might regard such a parting and the necessity of leaving his love behind whereas the second sounds very passionate/tempestuous, as you would expect a young, impetuous girl who lives in the moment to feel. He denies himself instant gratification in favor of biding his time for the future; she is caught up in the now, unable to see the future, just wanting what she wants.
> 
> Regarding Jaqen's vow in "Lorathi", I toyed with the phrasing and decided that in his native tongue, the use of "I" and "my" would be more natural than when he is speaking the common tongue. I liked that it sounded more personal that way and could see how a non-native speaker of the common tongue might have a of way of using odd phrasing that would not translate in his own language, especially if a sort of "first person familiar/informal" set of expressions exists in that native language (I'm not a linguistics expert, so go with me on this).
> 
> Thank you all for your continued support and readership.
> 
> And, as always, a fair percentage of this stuff belongs to that evil genius, GRRM, and I do not profit from it.


	57. Chapter 57

 

_There are only two ways out of here. One is through the door. The other..._

_is through me._

* * *

There is a sort of dichotomy of feelings that can erupt around a long-awaited event; a blend of emotions that serves to dictate the pace of one's heart and the way one feels deep on the inside, in one's very gut. A person may feel elation that the expected time has finally arrived and at the same time, be apprehensive about the potential outcomes. There is eagerness and dread; excited anticipation and fearful uncertainty; impatience and reluctance; confidence and nervousness. In a strange way, this mix of warring sentiments can steady the one experiencing them, leaving one with more control and insight rather than less, even in situations where events are definitively out of one's control and cloaked in mystery. Sometimes, the perfect equilibrium is struck and a flood of opposing feelings can lead to balance. In that balance a person may find that their anxieties fade away and their tumultuous emotions level off. A person may find the calm of still water.

A person may find stillness.

In this way, the Cat found herself feeling mostly collected and reposed despite the kernel of disquiet that had sprouted and tickled her insides as her brother waited for her to don her clothing, his broad back turned to afford his sister her privacy (and to save his own embarrassment. He was still a bit sensitive about the breast-grabbing incident). The girl reluctantly removed her master's grey blouse, the one in which she had been sleeping, and laid it carefully on her bed before pulling her black and white garb over her head. The Bear's attire matched her own, the two of them wearing their soft acolyte's robes.

Once she was dressed, the large boy took his sister by her elbow and she did her best to ignore the grim expression he wore. She knew he did not approve of her choice; that he would have rather been two days out to sea with her by then and not escorting her through the corridors of the House of Black and White. She assumed the Lyseni's silent and gruff demeanor was due to his irritation with her decision to follow through with her trial rather than any foreknowledge of her actual task and so she did not let his expression or his lack of warmth worry her. Thinking on what the Bear had been forced to do in order to earn his face, it was understandable that he would have little to say and no smiles for his sister just then. The girl knew that simply his being with her in that moment was likely dredging up harrowing memories for him and so she reached her small hand out and rested it on the back of his arm, rubbing him gently there and trying to convey some sense of comfort to him. His only acknowledgment of the gesture was a small sigh. He led her to the stairwell and they descended together.

Beneath the temple existed a network of dark and damp tunnels that could be used to enter and exit the lowest level in secret from various points about the city. Their use by acolytes was strictly forbidden, yet the entrance to one such tunnel was where the large Lyseni boy led his sister. From the folds of his robe, he produced a rather heavy looking iron key and used it to open the lock of a door through which the girl had never stepped before. Swinging the door open wide, he pulled his sister through the opening after him and into the tunnel.

Torches were lit at intervals along the misted walls and the Bear reached back for his sister's hand, pulling her through the flickering light and dancing shadow that marked the space around them. The main corridor through which they walked ended in a juncture where several different tunnels split off, snaking away in different directions. When the companions reached the split, the boy chose the right-most pathway, a tunnel which the Cat's sense of direction told her would lead them toward the canal. This tunnel proved to be a short one and they emerged into the Braavosi twilight, on the slope of the canal embankment, a mere 30 yards from the temple entrance.

"Are you really going to do this, sister?" the Bear asked the girl after they had scrambled up the embankment to street level.

She nodded, finding her throat a bit dry.

The large boy leaned his head down so that his mouth drew even with her ear.

"I know of another tunnel," he told her quietly, his voice tinged with urgency. "If you are uncertain about this path you have chosen, there is still time for us to..."

"No, I'm... I'm going to do this," the Cat reiterated, giving her brother's hand a squeeze. He hesitated for the briefest of moments, but then swallowed and turned toward the House of Black and White.

"Let's go then."

"What, back to the temple?" she asked in confusion as the boy took a step in that direction.

"Yes, sister. Your task awaits you beyond the ebony and weirwood doors." He sounded distant, and a bit formal. It was not like him, but perhaps that was fitting for the occasion.

She found herself surprised by the fact that they were going to reenter the House of Black and White and though it was only a fleeting thing, there was a small stab of fear at the revelation. Somehow, she had convinced herself that her brother would lead her to the docks where she would find some familiar whore or sailor or tavern owner to dispatch; perhaps someone who had once shown her kindness or sympathy when she was Blind Beth or Cat of the canals. Both of her brothers had earned their faces far from the temple, out in town, yet she was being led back inside of the place she had called home for four years. What did that mean?

_It means nothing,_ she chastised herself. _Blood spills indoors or out, within the temple or at an inn or along the docks. What does it matter? It is not the where, but the who that should concern me._

_No,_ her little voice interjected _. Worry is not for us. Nothing and no one should concern you._

She bristled a bit at that, thinking of those who held a place of importance in her life. The Bear. Jaqen. Umma. Little Syrio. Even the handsome man. All of them together made up her pack here in Braavos; the family she had cobbled together for herself, without intending to do so. Surely she could not be expected to forsake them. Even the principal elder had his attachments, it was plain to see. Jaqen was like a son to him; a son of whom much was expected. And she could not deny that the Kindly Man was also attached to her, in his way. She had always sensed it and though she did not truly understand it, she had to admit that she had felt the connection herself. It was true that she could not be what Jaqen was to the elder, but she... she was like... _something else._

A remembered phrase, Jaqen's words to her shortly after his return from Westeros, echoed in her ears then. _A girl must be no one._

The girl felt a little cold then, those words somehow fuller, heavier, sharper to her in that moment than they had ever seemed to be before.

As brother and sister climbed the stone steps that would take them up to the main temple entrance, the ebony and weirwood doors opened and out stepped the handsome man wearing the robe of a Faceless master, the black and white halves of the garment a mirror image of the girl's own, his hood pulled up and draped over his head. Seeing her handsome master dressed in that manner called to mind the night where he and three others had hidden their faces in the shadows of their hoods and tossed her from the temple into the murky waters of the canal. Involuntarily, the girl shuddered.

The master assassin's expression was as sober and unsmiling as she had ever seen it. The Cat wondered at that. Gone was his characteristic smirk and in its place was a rather serious frown. There was a determined set to his mouth and his eyes lacked their usual joy. The Westerosi apprentice told herself that the master's face was merely reflecting the gravity of the occasion just as the Bear's grim look was reflecting the rekindled grief that the situation had stirred within him. As the Cat and the Bear approached the waiting man, the master assassin nodded his greeting to them before he spoke.

"It is time to earn your face, little wolf," the handsome man said. "Are you ready?"

"I am," the girl replied simply, sounding both composed and certain.

"Then enter," the master directed, stepping aside.

The girl walked past the temple's wide-flung doors flanked by the Myrish assassin and the Lyseni acolyte, passing through the entrance like a supplicant. _Or a willing sacrifice,_ she thought, but then pushed the unwelcome and ludicrous idea from her mind. The Kindly Man was there to meet her in the broad entryway and like the handsome man, he was wearing his black and white robe, cowl pulled over his head like a hood, covering his features in shadow. He reached out and placed his hands upon the Cat's shoulders for a moment, gazing serenely into her eyes, looking at her as a doting grandfather or a proud master would. He lifted one of his hands then and touched her cheek, his fingers warm against her chilled flesh. Despite the obvious strength in his hand, the gesture was tender; affectionate, even _._ His blue eyes were fathomless and piercing as they studied the acolyte in the silence. To the girl, it felt as if the elder gazed upon her face for a great while but in fact, the look that passed between them lasted only a few seconds. Finally, he told her that she had only one task to perform before she would be allowed to take her vows.

"The council met, child, and all agreed that your mission at Atius Biro's manse was a more than adequate demonstration of your skill and dedication. That mission will serve as your final trial. All that is left for you is to earn your face," the elder revealed. "That, you will do tonight."

The girl ruled her face and did not betray her shock at his words. She had not expected this. As far as she knew, the Bear had yet to complete his final trial and she had thought that they might be directed to work together on some assignment before they were allowed to take their vows. Now, it seemed as if the girl might become a fully ordained Faceless Man within mere moments. She felt fortunate and she felt grateful. Knowing how close she was to the end of her training, she was filled with sudden and burning impatience, keen to be finished. _Her future was at her fingertips._

"How am I to do this? How do I earn my face?" the Cat inquired, trying to rein in her enthusiasm. Somehow, with the somber looks on the faces of her companions, expressing glee felt unseemly. She waited for the elder's instruction.

"By the pool in the main chamber, you will find an array of weapons laid out and someone waiting for you. Choose your weapon and then use it to deliver the gift to this person."

"That's all?" the girl asked. "There are no special requirements? No specific way this must be done?"

"No, child. Simply deliver the gift as you see fit. You must give this life up as an offering, and when you do, you will have succeeded in your task and earned your face for all time."

She considered his words. Did the principal elder mean for her to spar with someone? _To the death?_ Was this a final test of her blade skills? Unless it was a well-trained master, she doubted that whoever it was would even be a challenge for her but she could not believe that the order would risk sacrificing a master to prove a point. So, if she was not meant to spar with a Faceless assassin, was she simply supposed to serve as a headsman? Or a butcher?

_It seemed far too easy._

"Who is it?" the girl asked suspiciously, her presumption at questioning her betters an old habit (a disagreeable one) that the Kindly Man chose to overlook just then.

"Someone whose life Him of Many Faces requires that you take," the elder replied simply, turning from her so that he might lead her to her final destination. The girl had not truly expected him to answer her question, but there was a tiny ball of trepidation forming in her gut, cold and hard, and she was discomfited. Little Syrio's face flashed in her mind. She had not thought to ask the Bear about the little pot boy when she had the chance, and now it was too late. _Where was he?_

_Fear cuts deeper than swords,_ she told herself. _There is no honor in sacrificing a blameless child, nor is there profit in it. It will not be him. They would not ask it of me._

Images from a remembered dream echoed in her head. Her father, perched atop his tomb in the icy crypts of Winterfell, admonishing her, his words scourging her in a deep place. _Are you Ilyn Payne?_ She pushed the image and the words aside. She could not afford the distraction. She could not afford to doubt; not now. Words were wind and the words in dreams were even less than that.

Or so she tried to convince herself.

Her brother placed his hand on her left elbow while the handsome man's palm was pressed gently against the small of her back. The trio trailed behind the Kindly Man, following him down the long corridor of the temple until the Cat arrived in the middle of the main chamber, stopping ten feet before the dark, still pool. She cast her eyes about the temple as she came to a halt and saw that the other acolytes as well as all of the masters and priests who had taken vows to serve Him of Many Faces were present ( _these things must be witnessed,_ she recalled Jaqen saying), save the few who had been sent out on assignment: the man on the ship bound for White Harbor, the master who was sent to Pentos weeks ago, and her own master, who by now was well away from Braavos, on a ship bound for the place he would not name. But that wasn't right; _there was one more missing,_ she realized. She looked around the chamber again, counting, peering into the hoods of the men (and one woman) standing against the walls of the space, trying to discover who was absent from her final test.

_The rat-faced boy._

_Ah, brother Rat, where are you?_ Hadn't he taken his vows already? She had assumed so, mostly by virtue of his absence in the temple of late. But if he had, where had he got off to? Had the Kindly Man truly sent him out on an assignment? Or was this the Westerosi boy's final show of disrespect, ignoring her and the single most important task that she had to perform as an acolyte of the House of Black and White, purposefully snubbing her by his absence?

She looked straight ahead then, her eyes following the Kindly Man as he walked before her and then stopped, turning to face her.

"Come, child," the principal elder beckoned.

The handsome man gave her a barely perceptible push with the flat of his palm, urging her forward toward the elder. Her brother's grip tightened on her elbow for a fraction of a second before he released her. She could feel the tension rolling off of the Bear as she stepped away from him and toward the Kindly Man. As she moved in the direction of the pool and came to stand just two feet in front of the elder, she realized there was someone behind him; a kneeling figure. The principal elder looked down at the Cat, wearing his kindliest expression, and he seemed... _almost proud_. Proud and expectant and... happy. Or, at least what she thought _happy_ would look like on his typically guarded face. It warmed her. It filled her with the sort of contentment and ease that she had not known since her father had called out encouragement to her as he watched her lessons with her dancing master back in the Red Keep. It stunned her to realize that somewhere inside of her, she still harbored a piece of the young child she had been then, and that part of her craved a father's approval. Without Ned Stark to give that to her, she was willing to accept it from the Kindly Man instead.

The elder moved to the side then, fully revealing the figure that was kneeling behind him on the stone floor before the temple pool. The girl studied the person to whom she had been instructed to deliver the gift of death. Clothed in an unbelted, flowing robe, the immobile figure appeared like a fulcrum with the obscured head at the apex, hands bound in front of the body with a length of thick rope. By the size, it was an adult, not a child. She felt a wave of relief wash over her. _Not Syrio._ The figure was masked by a coarse, dark sack pulled over the head, its edges bunched against the shoulders. She could see by the posture that the person's head was bowed, as if in prayer. Though she was still four paces shy of the kneeling figure in the robe that flared out around him, she could tell by his size and build that it was likely a man, though fat or thin, handsome or hideous, old or young, she could not say. _Tall, though_ , she thought, based on the height he achieved even in kneeling. _Not that it mattered; the eels would feast on a tall corpse just as well as a short one._

"Choose your weapon," the elder prompted her. He waved his hand toward the pool and the girl saw that there were several instruments arrayed on a dark cushion sitting on its edge behind the kneeling figure: a longsword, a _Bravo's_ blade, a large dagger, a length of rope, thin throwing knives, a vial of poison, and a blunt cudgel.

"The dagger," she responded quietly.

The Kindly Man's eyes held a hint of approval as he retrieved the weapon. He held out the beautiful dagger, offering it to her like a gift. The knife was an amazing thing to behold. _Valyrian steel_ , she thought, almost gasping as the candlelight danced along the blade, illustrating the characteristic ripples in the metalwork, all shadow and light in the dimness of the main chamber, giving the knife, if only for a moment, the appearance of a writhing serpent in the elder's hand. The hilt guard and pommel were burnished silver with diamonds and rubies encrusted in an alternating pattern. _Frost and blood,_ she thought absently, calling up the strange image as if from a dream. _Maybe it was a dream. That seemed right. There had been both frost and blood in the crypts of Winterfell, that place which occupied her mind so frequently while she slept._

As was the case with all Valyrian steel, the dagger was deceptively light and the edge of the thing was wickedly sharp. The weapon was at once beautiful and frightening, as only something spelled and magicked could be, and she took the offered blade with the reverence of a priest receiving a ritual sacrament.

The apprentice knew that with such a blade, she could open the man's throat through mail and leather and clothing all and so to do so through the coarse sack that hid his head and neck would be nothing. It would be less than nothing with a Valyrian steel edge to do the work. Yet, she did not know this man. He had not offended her in any way. _I will do my duty, whatever is asked,_ she recalled saying, but that did not mean that she couldn't lift the edge of his hood and let the steel kiss his skin directly. _A clean death._ The order had honor; an untarnished reputation for excellence. There was a nobility to performing this work; a nobility that called out to her Stark blood; a nobility which reminded her that to perform the will of the Many-Faced god was to give a gift; a holy gift. Her father would be proud of her doing things the right way, surely ( _Are you a headsman?_ her little voice asked faintly. She ignored it.)

Well, the Kindly Man would be proud of her, and he was the closest thing to a father the Cat had anymore, she supposed. She was certain that Jaqen would approve as well, if only he had been able to stay to see her earn her face and step into the order as a sister.

_Sister._ The word made her smile slightly. She could not imagine Jaqen ever actually addressing her that way. To Jaqen, she was ever a _lovely girl_ and a _sweet child_ and most recently, _my love._

The girl and the principal elder circled each other, exchanging places. The apprentice walked quickly to the kneeling man, intent on delivering the gift of death, as she had been told to do while the Kindly Man faced the girl and her sacrifice head on. Any niggling doubts about her task were silenced beneath the heavy veil of piety and solemnity being demonstrated by the members of the order. She could feel all the eyes of all the Faceless Men upon her. The Cat circled the dead man and stepped up close to his back. If he sensed her presence or felt her nearness, he did not indicate it but kept his head bowed. Perhaps he was praying. Perhaps he was unconscious, propped here in this position. Perhaps he was resigned to his fate. Perhaps he welcomed the gift. She did not know and she did not care ( _she didn't!)_ She pressed herself carefully into his back, putting her left arm over his shoulder and lifting one side of the coarse hood up with her right hand. The skin of the man's neck now bared, the Cat pushed the sharp point of her blade directly against his throat, readying to open it from ear to ear, quick and clean. As she leaned down to whisper the words of the Faceless Men into his ear, she froze and so, too, did the "Valar morghulis" that had barely formed on her lips.

For an impossibly long time, she simply failed to inhale, forgetting the _how_ of breathing. Time was stopped and the only sound was the movement of air in and out of the hooded man's nose and the pounding of war drums in her ears that some part of her nearly paralyzed mind knew must be the sound of her own blood beating frantically against the walls of her vessels. Her heart was squeezing painfully in her chest and she could not take her eyes off of the man's neck.

When she lifted the dead man's hood, she had revealed three long, silvery scars which interrupted the perfection of the tanned flesh of her victim's neck. The pale lines represented well-healed cat scratches given this man by a cranky tom in an alley adjacent to an armorer's shop (the preeminent armorer of Braavos). She saw them and it was as if her body was turned instantly to stone. She was paralyzed for centuries; for seconds; forever. For a horrifying instant, she was a timid and scared creature, a little grey mouse who wanted nothing more than to scurry into some dark, safe hole and hide until the danger had passed. A hint of cloves hit her nose and then she was a ferocious and wild beast, a wolf who had been cornered and readied herself to maul and mangle with terrible brutality, to fight for her own life, and for his. She clutched the edge of the hood in her hand tightly and a thousand thoughts came to her all at once, falling around her like rain, one thought flowing into another until they were a nearly indistinguishable jumble of ideas and memories and words and feelings. She heard familiar voices in her head: the Kindly Man admonishing her to stillness and telling her that _obedience is a choice_ ; Syrio Forel teaching her to about the true seeing and saying _boy, girl. You are a sword, that is all_ ; the Bear teasing her, trying to make her realize that she loved her master _and she did, gods help her, she did, so much, too much for this, too much to bear it, with everything she had, everything there was, too much too much too much;_ the Bear no longer teasing her but drained and serious and broken, saying, _run, sister;_ her father, telling her _the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword;_ and Jaqen himself, talking to her, sometimes sternly, sometimes gently, saying so many things. _You must feel it in your gut. You have all the instinct in the world, you must learn to use it. Lose me? But lovely girl, you've only just found me. Stupid girl, who do you think your Kindly Man is? I will not allow death to part us._ And then there was the promise he had wrenched from her and made her repeat until it was branded into her. _A girl must obey. Whatever the thing is, she must do it._

_A girl must swear to a man._

And so she had sworn to her master. Of course she had.

_I will do my duty, whatever is asked._

_I will do my duty,_ she had promised, again and again.

But this, she could not do; could never have done. How could she? How could she forsake him? Could she cut out her own beating heart and still live? Just as well slit her own throat as his, the outcome would be the same. No, she would not; _could not._ This was not duty. This was treason. Sin. _Faithlessness. Apostasy._

This was annihilation.

A small, bitter smile curved the girl's lips then as she looked around at the gathered conclave, the sharp edge of her steel resting against her master's scarred neck. She knew what they would say; that to _not_ do this thing was treason and faithlessness and apostasy. To disobey was the sin, in their eyes. She knew that to _not_ do this thing was annihilation, too.

_Disobedience has consequences._

Another memory came to her then, unbidden. Jaqen again, speaking to her. _Anyone so precious to you as to be worth such a profound sacrifice would love you enough to insist that you not make it._

And then, clutching the dagger hilt so tightly that her knuckles turned white, she knew what she must do.

* * *

_A stripling crouched at Baelor's feet, filthy and starving. The indistinct features common to a thin, childish figure would have made it difficult for the casual observer to know for a certainty if the youth was a girl or a boy, but both the clothes and the almost feral wariness of the face seemed to suggest the grey-eyed thing was someone's son. There was not a person among the common crowd (or among the highborn company gathered on the steps of the Sept, for that matter) who would have guessed that the small creature looking up at the royal retinue, the High Septon, and the King's Justice was the youngest daughter of a great lord; a most beloved child who had been feared lost forever. The girl heard words then, some of them from her father's own mouth, but they were nonsensical. Eddard Stark was an honorable man; the_ most _honorable man. What they said... what he said... That was not truth. Her hand gripped Needle hard, and she desperately searched the sea of jeering men and women before her, looking for the path to him; looking for the solution to reveal itself. Because this could not happen. Her father could not be dishonored and he could not be killed. It was impossible and if she must be the one to rescue him, then there had to be a way. She knew it with the irrefutable certainty of which only children are capable. She would do it. She had to do it._

_But, of course, she had not. She could not. She was a scrawny child of one and ten with no measurable skill, no power, and no ability save what mattered most to her in the whole of her life._

_And so the impossible happened and in the space of a breath, her father was gone from the world._

_That feeling, that utter helplessness, filled her insides up until she was drowning in it; choking on it. She reviled it. She cursed them all and vowed her revenge. Her father had needed a savior, had needed her to save him, but it had been she who was rescued that day. She had been the one saved, whisked away by Yoren, her anonymity and her life preserved by the black brother's quick wits and his desire to do what he felt was right, consequences be damned. She could not have named the sense that fought with the helplessness for residency inside of her then; she was too young and too full of grief to understand that it was gratitude immeasurable. She began to pray, though her reverences were nothing more than ragged whispers of names she desired to keep; people she should not forget._

_Until their right time._

_It was the gratitude that she felt toward her rescuer, unnamed though it was, accompanied by an instinct to protect her friends and her own life that led her to fight for Yoren, useless exercise that it was. Untrained men, boys and one small girl raised swords against skilled knights and soldiers but in the end, all she was left with was the wretched helplessness once again, with even Needle taken from her. She watched more injustices, witnessed more atrocities, made more vows, and said more prayers._

_She also rescued Jaqen H'ghar. She did not owe it to him, and Gendry even urged her to forget him and save herself, but she carried too much of her father inside of her for that. She did what her father would have done. She did the honorable thing. For that, the Lorathi assassin taught her the way in which someone who has power expresses gratitude. And he made her a little less helpless._

_Ned Stark taught his daughter that she must do what was right and just, even if she feared the consequences. Syrio Forel taught her that her fear could be mastered. Jaqen H'ghar, though... he taught her that she could become the thing that men feared most._

* * *

The girl knew that what she was about to do was tantamount to suicide, but she also knew that she would do it anyway. It could not be helped, for she could not hurt him and she would not allow anyone else to, either. Not as long as she drew breath. Her blade still poised to open Jaqen's throat, his apprentice flicked her eyes quickly about the room once more, noting the positions of the masters and priests and acolytes, searching in the dim light for weapons (all while knowing she could not hope to see every blade concealed within the folds of the black and white robes they all wore), and plotting the path to the main entrance of the temple. She took in a slow, deep breath, closed her eyes for one brief moment, and then looked up as she smiled maliciously at the Kindly Man.

"Not today," she whispered.

The elder's piercing blue eyes widened slightly, but the look seemed more one of interest than surprise.

With lightning quickness, the Valyrian steel left the place where it rested against healed scars and dropped to the bound hands of the Lorathi. The ropes were severed with the ease of passing a spoon through clotted cream and as they fell away, the apprentice yanked the coarse hood from his head and spoke to her master.

"Get up, Jaqen," she hissed in the kneeling man's ear. "Get up!"

Spinning, the girl snatched the longsword and the Bravo's blade from their resting place and jumped in front of her mentor as the robed assassins began to react to her threat. The Cat tossed the heavier blade to Jaqen and watched in disbelief as it bounced off of his chest.

"Please!" she cried. "Please get up!"

Her panicked begging might have called to mind her pleading tone from the previous night when she had urged him not to leave her, but the man kneeling in the temple did not possess that memory. His eyes were dull; dead and dark; _wrong_. There was no spark in them, no recognition, no response to her. His hands hung limply at his sides, his head remained bowed, and the sword sat useless on the stones of the floor before him.

"What have you done to him?" the Cat demanded in a near-screech, furiously glaring at the Kindly Man. Then, to Jaqen, she asked wildly, "What did they do?"

She had to know, so that she could set it to rights. Was it a poison or some trick of Asshai'? Would it pass in time or did it require an antidote? The Lorathi was still, unmoving, and unblinking. His eyes did not focus on her as she spoke to him, her voice rising and becoming more shrill despite her efforts to control herself; to deny the panic she could feel rising beneath her breast. Her master did not seem to follow her movements at all. It was as if he was a statue on a tomb, no more alive than the marble likeness of Lyanna about which the girl sometimes dreamed.

" _What did you do to him_?" she roared at the principal elder. He merely met her glare, saying nothing, studying her. Desperate, the girl turned quickly to the kneeling assassin and addressed him once more.

"Please, Jaqen. _Please._ "

Her words became whispered, pressured things, spilling over her lips so rapidly that it was nearly impossible to understand them. Urging him to rise. Urging him to fight with her. Urging him to save himself. She pled and beseeched to no avail. The Lorathi did not move. With a frustrated cry, the Cat dropped the dagger and swept the longsword up from the floor, holding her two blades out before her as her master had taught her.

_Learn to be fast enough with two blades and conquer a roomful of men._

Remembering Jaqen's words did not give her hope; these were not ordinary men filling this room. But there were throwing knives behind her as well, arrayed artfully on the dark cushion at the pool's edge. If she was fast enough, then maybe...

The priests and masters were moving toward her, closing their circle around her ever tighter. A few had dirks drawn, held warily before them. Others merely held up their hands, palms forward, in some gesture meant to reassure her; to calm her. She laughed at that, the sound barking out her disbelief and her refusal to go quietly. She knew that if need be, every one of them could produce a weapon. The handsome man hung back, keeping his place next to the Bear, but if pressed, she understood without a doubt that he needed no weapon to exert deadly force. Hadn't she learned that lesson very well from the Myrish assassin?

As she surveyed the threat around her, the Cat's eyes came to rest on the principal elder. The Kindly Man stood his ground, not moving, but still closer to her than the others, his hands empty and clasped before him, giving him a posture that seemed to mock her in its serenity. He watched her intently, his look both calculating and fascinated. He seemed to be appraising her and said nothing to either discourage or encourage her actions. She felt the menace all around her then, both before her and behind, and hesitated for a mere fraction of a second. There were too many of them, and they were too skilled. To pretend otherwise would be nothing short of absurdity. She knew very well that she would die today, and because of that, Jaqen would die too. She could not save him and she could not save herself. She bowed her head slightly to the Kindly Man and a look of delight began to form on his face, but then she spoke and his smile evaporated in an instant.

"Valar morghulis," Arya Stark said, and the elder could see that she was once again rage made flesh. "Let's dance."

* * *

_A flurry of movement, low grunts and sporadic cries. Still, the place is eerily quiet to be hosting such a melee. In this space, she moves like a ghost; like a tempest; like a frosted breath released among the tall pines of the wolfswood. She is everywhere and she is nowhere and she is fulfilling her destiny of blood and steel. Inside, she is all stillness, thinking no thoughts of her own, moving by instinct alone, an exquisite medley of reaction and prediction; a poem of violent intention and implacable resolve. Her mind dances forth as quickly as her blades, brushing against admiration and vexation and resentment; finding objective and animus and surprisingly, some fear. It informs her and she uses it all. She draws it in like breath; just as unconsciously; just as necessarily; just as routinely._

_A cavalcade of words and memories plays in her mind but though she hears them all, she does not pause to consider them. She can ill-afford the distraction. There is no order to them; no regulation. They come and go with little regard for her current circumstance. They play in the background of her dance, setting the pace, determining the rhythm of her movements even as her gift shapes the movements themselves._

Do you trust a man?

_Three thin blades fly from her fingertips, and two find their mark. The feat is accomplished with blinding speed and then her second sword is back in her hand. She uses it to disarm the stern-faced man, wounding his shoulder and causing his blade to fall to the ground._

All men must die.

_She does not stray too far from her master, afraid someone will try to complete the task that she would not in her disobedience. She has a vague hope that the Bear may come to her aid, and a less vague fear that he will. The calculation is simple and she does not wish for his death, too. Her mind touches his briefly, and she wills him to inaction. She hopes it sticks but she can spare no more concentration for him. Her foes are too many._

In situations where a certain outcome must be obtained, it is better to make your own luck.

_Effortlessly, she ducks beneath the slash of another thin water dancer's blade. The lordling. She has not spent much time observing his skill over the years, as he is often away on missions and little interested in acolytes when he is within the walls of the temple. She notes that he is good. He is very good. She is better and she feints, drawing him in before she slashes his thigh with her longsword. The way he drops to the ground tells her he will not threaten her or Jaqen again._

Arya Stark does whatever she pleases. Arya Stark cares nothing for consequences. Arya Stark is reckless.

_Her blades give her superior reach. Most of the Faceless Men are armed with daggers and long knives, unable to close in on her in the way they would like. Those who try find themselves scrambling back with a quickness. She has no mercy. She does not care for their lives. They feel it and they react._

Salt on her tongue, her tongue pressed against his, tasting him. Tasting her own tears. The taste of her tears on his skin. The taste of goodbye.

_It is almost as if she can feel his lips on hers, his tongue sweeping the inside of her mouth and she hazards a look at his kneeling form then. The distraction is very brief, but it is enough. The cut to her upper arm burns but she does not drop her sword as her own blood begins to spill. She turns and gives as good as she gets. Syrio Forel would be proud. Jaqen would be proud too, if only he were aware. Maybe he is aware, but she sees no evidence to suggest it._

Winter is coming.

_"Enough of this foolishness," the principal elder says, but his voice is kind. This angers her. She turns for him; moves toward him, her blades at the ready. He does not flinch as she advances. He keeps his place, immobile as the Titan but she does not allow herself to hesitate. He smiles._

Because, little wolf, an assassin who cannot follow orders is of little use to his master.

_She does not know where his steel comes from, but she expects no less. Like the lordling, the Kindly Man fights with a Bravo's blade. Like the lordling, he is a master of it. Unlike the lordling, he is better than her. Just a bit quicker. Just a bit more powerful. He does not trumpet his intentions. His mind is still and dark, a deep pool without ripples. He does not draw her blood, but he knocks the longsword from her hand. She senses that he is toying with her and she seethes. She is left only with her own thin blade and he bids the others to stand back. She is his._

You cannot really believe that they would let you keep him.

_She struggles to remain patient as the blood continues to flow freely down her arm. She knows that if she lets her anger get the better of her, he will run her through. She knows that she must wait for her opportunity. She knows that she must maintain her stillness. She hears Syrio's voice; she hears "calm as still water", and for half a second, she thinks this will work. Then she thinks of Jaqen, blank and bowed behind her and she thinks of the Kindly Man telling her she must offer him in sacrifice and the smoldering wildfire within her flares in an instant. She is frenzied, full of hatred, and she does not bide her time. She rushes at him and though she is not quite sure how, she finds herself with no weapon as the narrow steel clatters against the stone floor, the elder's one strong arm pinning her back to his chest, his own thin blade angled at her throat. She rages and strains, not caring that the sharp edge of her opponent's sword is beginning to dig into her neck. The principal elder calls out for assistance. The girl is gripped firmly by strong hands which drag her toward the side corridor; the passageway that will take her to the stairwell which leads to her floor and her cell. She is confused. Why did he not open her throat?_

No, you do not know. I hope you never know.

_She can see the Kindly Man bend to retrieve the longsword from the place where she had dropped it. He steps toward Jaqen and the girl's heart leaps into her throat. Though she wastes a precious second trying to deny what the action means, it is clear to her what the elder intends. She wails, screaming, "No! No!" over and over again. Jaqen's head is bowed and the elder stands to his side, his body blocking most of her view of her master. She looks left and right quickly and sees that she is being dragged away by the handsome man and the Bear. She alternates between begging them to help Jaqen and screaming her anguish and terror down the corridor toward the horrendous scene._

_This fear, she cannot master._

_She is uncertain if her heart or her head will burst first but she is convinced that she will not survive this. She is screaming and screaming, and it is the sound of the purest agony and the deepest torment. She sees the sword flash upward, lifted high above the elder's head and for a tiny moment, she is crouched at Baelor's feet, looking for a way; searching for the solution, because this cannot happen; it is impossible. She screams and sobs and pulls against the restraining arms carrying her away from him. Despite her skill, despite years of training, despite becoming the thing that men fear most, she is just as helpless today as she was when she was an urchin among a crowd of people watching her father's head roll down the steps of a sept, parted from his body by his own sword. At the instant the longsword begins to fall, she is mercifully pulled through the door and into the stairwell, her screams continuing to echo throughout the temple even though she is spared the sight of his blood spilling to the floor._

* * *

_**Beautiful Lasers (2 Ways)-**_ Lupe Fiasco (I can't win if it's me against me, one of us ain't gonna survive)

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is shorter than my recent offerings but I had always intended for the final trial to stand alone, so I hope you will all forgive the brevity. The last section is a departure for me since I never write in the present tense but it somehow felt right here. I think it conveys the urgency better. "Winter is Coming" and "All men must die" both belong to GRRM, of course, but the rest of the remembered lines from this last section come from things scattered throughout this story.
> 
> The first line of the chapter is taken from the song listed at the end but there is a tiny grammatical correction because although grammar is not an important focus when listening to hip hop, I found myself unable to allow subject/verb disagreement to stand when writing the lyric out in a literary format. Sorry, Lupe. ;-)
> 
> GRRM owns things. No personal profit. Thanks for sticking around thus far—we are two chapters and an epilogue away from the end.


	58. Chapter 58

_And the blood will dry underneath my nails..._

* * *

The girl tried to dig her heels into the floor as if it were made of soft earth rather than hard stone. She could not stop her tears from falling even though they obscured her vision and even though they were of no use to her or to her master. She could not stop herself from screaming even though her little voice told her it was of no more use than her tears. She could not stop any of these signs of her weakness, and her own helplessness enraged her. Twisting futilely in the arms of her brother and the handsome man, she found that her strangled cries and sobs, the kicking of her legs and the digging of her heels all happened independent of her will. She could not have stopped any of it, even if she had possessed the fortitude or focus to try, just as she could not stop the Kindly Man from finishing the deed that had been hers to complete.

Her little voice tried to suggest a more articulate response to her, but the only words the girl was capable of producing then were, "No! No! _No_!" in a repeating line, endless and intermingled with choking and gasping and wailing. The screaming sobs tore out of her chest and up her throat like desperate souls trapped too long in the seven hells, clawing their way to the surface of the world and escaping into the wind. She screamed until she was sure her eardrums would burst from the sound of it; screamed until her voice failed and turned into a rasping, weak thing; screamed until the screams sounded foreign and strange to her, almost as if they were coming from somewhere outside of herself; screamed all the way through the corridor and down the stairwell, into her cell, and for a long time after they shut her away behind her own door. She screamed and screamed and screamed, even when the waif appeared and the Bear and the handsome man pinned her to her bed. She screamed as the diminutive master tended to her injured arm and then poured something down her throat. The girl choked and screamed until whatever it was began to affect her and sleep overtook her. And then, once she was pulled unwillingly into the blackness of fitful rest and could no longer force the screams to leave her mouth, she screamed and screamed in her nightmares, thrashing around in her bed like a wretch in the midst of a shaking fit.

The Cat's agitation was such that she did not descend as deeply into unconsciousness as she otherwise might have but the masters dared not give her more of their potion for fear that she might cease to breathe. This had the unusual effect of producing a twilight state in her, where she was partially aware of her surroundings yet trapped inside of her nightmares, her dreams becoming a confused web produced by poison and grief and rage as well as the malefic and spidery arms that reached out for her from deep within her own fevered brain. She leapt and rolled effortlessly between memory and desire; fear and hope; guilt and thirst; all visions of past, present, and future interlaced and overlapping. She existed then within a muddle of Winterfell and wolves, Jaqen and Gendry, blood and frost, her father and her elder, and the whisperings of the Faceless assassins sent to keep her from doing harm to herself and the others in the temple.

At first, there was mostly darkness and pain, punctuated by the screams of a young, rail-thin girl who alternately ran amid melted walls in a gown of blood and crouched at the feet of a pious and long-dead king, her useless steel mocking her as tears left muddy tracks in the dirt which marked her pale cheeks. This was all mixed with the anguished cries of a gifted young assassin who had lost one too many of the people whom she could claim to love. Then, the wolf came to her. Or rather, she found her way to her wolf, flying a thousand leagues in the space of one soft sigh.

Nymeria shivered and then suddenly, she was pacing, restless and unsettled, her coat bristling, alternately howling and snarling. The sound of it was a discordant mixture of mournful and frightening response which befuddled the towering knight.

"What is it, m'lady?" Ser Gendry asked, peering at her from beneath the fringe of his lashes, blue eyes both confused and concerned as he reached out a hand to stroke her great head. The wolf began to push against his touch, seeking solace for a sudden anguish she did not fully comprehend, but the girl wanted none of his comfort; wanted _no man's_ comfort. Because her hurts could not be soothed and because between the girl and the wolf, it was the girl who was the stronger of the two just then, she snapped at the man's proffered hand, not biting, but he did not make the mistake of reaching for her again. She howled into the darkness and whined at the heavy thudding of her heart, discomfited. The dark knight did not withdraw from her completely, but backed away a few steps and watched her warily. The direwolf pushed back a little and for a moment, Nymeria's strength was superior. She bowed her head slightly at her friend, in regret or apology though the offensive action was not truly her own. The girl slipped away from the blacksmith-turned-knight and her wolf ( _traitor_ ) to bow her own head before her father's tomb, pressing her forehead against the frozen stone of the vault as her awful keening shook her. The woven silver snowflakes of the lace overlay of her gown were encased in glittering ice and had become heavy, like chains, their clattering and clanking echoing off the walls, weaving through the tombs and bouncing against her eardrums until she could scarce hear her own thoughts. The chill air of the crypts stabbed at her throat and her lungs as she breathed in and then spoke.

"I failed again, father," she choked out.

"You have not failed yet, child," Lord Stark told her, his voice softly drifting down upon her like snow, emanating from somewhere above her kneeling form.

"I couldn't save him!" Arya cried, pulling her face back from the tomb and covering her eyes with the back of her hand as if she could use it to block out the images of her pain that played in her mind then. "Just as I couldn't save _you_!"

"That was never your purpose, sweet girl," her father said gently. "You were not made for that. You bear none of the blame for him or for me."

The girl dropped her hand from her eyes and stood with great effort, dragging her ice-chains with her, facing the still man atop the tomb, a look of disbelief shaping her features.

"How can you say that?" she wailed, the tears leaving curving tendrils of frost upon her pale cheeks. "Pray, father, what else was I made for? What use is my skill? What good is my blade if I cannot use it to save..."

She could not finish. Her words died on her tongue as she thought of her father's lowered head, _Jaqen's lowered head and bared neck_ , and the flash of unyielding steel above them both.

"You are my grey daughter and this is your home. The North has need. The time is now and you must come," he directed solemnly, seeming almost stern. "That is all you need do. Your place is here."

"I have no place," she croaked. "I have _no one_."

_I should be the one who is here when she awakens. She will not want to see you._

_I find it touching that you think what she wants matters in the least now._

He looked at her with sympathy, a sort of understanding in his Baratheon blue eyes, and it seemed to her that she had seen that look before; maybe back when he was the only one who knew her secret. Well, him and Yoren.

And Jaqen.

_Screaming and screaming and screaming. In her head, it was so loud that she could not hear her old friend speak to her then. His lips moved, but his words were lost amid her agonized howls. In her cell, it was only a small, hoarse sound, but still heartbreaking. Hands pressed her shoulders back into her mattress; a warm palm smoothly caressed her forehead and then stroked her hair._

"You are very attached to him," the handsome man said as the garish gondola sliced through the waters of the harbor. He meant to unsettle her, trying to imply that she was enamored with her Lorathi master. _How had he known? Even she had not understood then. Not really._

The breeze stirred the sheer golden curtain draped over the porthole and it blew across her face, giving her the veiled appearance of a courtesan, but just for a small moment.

"Aren't most apprentices attached to their masters?" There was a practiced innocence in her voice and her mannerisms ( _her employment of which was certainly a symptom of her own genuine naiveté_ ).

The assassin's mouth formed a half-smile. The gesture seemed almost involuntary, but he couldn't completely contain it, for he recognized the absurdity and extravagance of her performance. It was like a Pentoshi dying his brown beard brown.

"Indeed. And now that I am your master, how do you think we will fare, little wolf?"

The wolf howled and whined, howled and whined. Her memories were not her own then and her paws lacked their claws; they could find no purchase on the stone floor of the dim corridor as her grey eyes watched the Kindly Man's erect figure move smoothly toward her still and slumped master. Her arms were hooked by others, stronger than hers, and she was moving _away_ even as she struggled to move _toward._

"Please! Please! Help him. Help him! Help me! He's your brother! You can't... you can't... _oh, gods, you can't let..._ "

The handsome man said nothing but his face was slipping; slipping and falling and then it was setting itself once again, hard as obsidian and just as dark. Her stormy girl's eyes brimmed with tears as she took it all in and the screams tore out of her as her girl's heart sank further and further; so very far, falling and falling, down and down and down until it landed on a bed of snow; was laid upon a bed of feathers. Silken strands of silver tickled her brow. She closed her eyes against the need she saw reflected in that unblinking amethyst gaze as her mind attempted to scrabble and scrape its way up from the abyss to consciousness and action.

_I don't want to be here now. I don't understand this. It's just a dream, and so strange. It makes no sense._

_Watch,_ her little voice hissed. _Listen._

"I know you have endured much pain in your life." His voice was as silvered and soft as his hair. "If you would but give yourself to me, it would be as if it had never happened. I would make it all disappear."

_Yes. I want..._

"Disappear?" she sighed, wistful, perhaps even hopeful, but only for the briefest of moments. She shook her head slightly, feeling the merest brush of his hair across her cheek as she did. "It is not possible, your grace. My pain is too much a part of me."

"I wish to try, my lady," he said, slipping his hand over her shoulder, tracing the small scar there with his thumb. The action invoked an old memory, the sting of it sharp and hard, and a single tear formed in her eye. He gently brushed the drop away. "I promise that I will never hurt you."

She gave him a small laugh, but there was no joy in the sound.

"All the men in my life have made that promise to me in one way or another," the girl said, her hushed voice barely registering in his ear, "and all have broken their vow. I have learned that men ought not to make promises they cannot hope to keep."

"Sweet lady," he murmured, pushing her hair over her shoulder, "If you will allow me, then I will be the first to fulfill my vow."

He caught her lips with his and kissed her in a way that made her very skin begin to vibrate and thrum.

"My love, my love, my love," he whispered, and she felt something stir inside of her.

Burning.

Surrender.

_Should she be so restless? You said the potion would calm her. Her breathing is erratic!_

_Boy, if you can't stomach this, you are welcome to leave._ The voice contained an audible sneer.

"Welcome home, lovely girl," her master purred when he was almost upon her. Her heart leapt; soared; flew on raven's wings to impossible heights. Just his voice, just the _sound_ of it, was enough and her grief melted like Harren's walls beneath the onslaught of dragon's fire. Why had she been so sad? Hadn't she just been grieving? But, maybe not... She couldn't recall. There was a tiny, irritating feeling of doubt, like a small pebble in her boot, which told her this happiness was not real somehow. She shook it off. And then she was falling again, but this time it was not frightening. It was that _feeling_! That feeling of _falling too far,_ like when she was a little girl in Winterfell, hoping her girlish hopes; hoping to _fly!_

She thrust herself into his arms; clutched at his neck and his hair; felt his hands on her flesh. Her mouth met her master's in a frenzied crash of lips and teeth and blood; in a sweet, soft press of skin and tears. It was the first time. It was the last time. It was all the times somehow compacted into a second. A thousand thousand seconds; gorgeous ecstasy, never ending; over too soon.

_She has stilled. I think she will be fine now. You can leave us._

Laughter. Bitter.

_I'm not going anywhere._

"A girl should be bloody, too. This is her work."

"Please don't go, Jaqen."

"Jaqen is as dead as Arry," he said sadly.

_What do you suppose he will do with her now?_

_Why do you suppose it's your business to know?_ The amused tone marked the speaker but there was fatigue behind his voice.

_She is my sister._ This speaker was marked by the indignation in his tone.

_Not anymore._ Quietly. Regretfully. A whisper perhaps not meant for anyone to hear but himself.

He swore softly in Lorathi. _By all the gods, by all the gods, by all the gods..._ His lips were at her neck, her jaw, her ear as he spoke, punctuating each utterance with his kiss.

"I am yours, and ever will be."

_Come what may._

"Burn as I burn," she murmured, arching her neck as his lips drifted down to the hollow of her throat; an invitation. _Surrender._

Another goodbye, but this one more, somehow. Just... _more._ She tasted salt, hers, and the spice of his mouth, all at once, feeling the life inside of him; _feeling_ this dream of Jaqen. Her tears were on his lips and he pressed his tongue against hers, tasting, savoring, holding on as he let go. The touch felt right, in her bones, and the ache of it, of goodbye, was in her bones, too. He taught her what love was and then made her love him and then he was gone.

Gone. But more, somehow. Just... _more._

After a while, the dark knight moved infinitesimally toward the wolf, watching her warily. When he moved close enough to see the golden color of her eyes glinting in the firelight, he held her gaze and her whining stopped.

"What has happened, m'lady?" he whispered and his voice was like jolt of lightning that woke her from her dream within a dream. She was no longer staring into azure eyes but bronze.

_You look tired. You can leave if you need to rest._

_If you think I'm leaving her alone with you..._

Laughter, familiar and derisive, interrupted the boy.

_If I was planning to hurt her, I would have done it by now, and you could not have stopped me._

"A man will not hurt you, lovely girl," he murmured, his warmth seeping into her skin. "Do not hide from him."

"Liar!" she cried, shaking off the false comfort of his heat. "Liar!" Her voice increased its pitch and the words tumbled out of her without restraint. She could not stop them. She was screaming again, tearing at her bloody shift. " _Liar liar liar liar LIAR!"_

Because she _was_ hurt. It _hurt_. Oh, how it hurt, this aching misery. A gaping wound. A grievous burn. Flayed flesh. Fester and rot. Splintered bones. All less painful than this failure; this... _loss._

_You cannot blame him,_ her little voice said. _You know who is to blame._

"I am to blame!" she wailed, her hands against her hair, her broken fingernails digging into her own scalp, the blood and frost oozing from beneath her skin, coloring her temples, her cheeks, her neck; red and silvery white.

_No. Think, stupid._

The girl stopped abruptly and willed herself to stillness. Her eyes drifted closed and a kindly face materialized from the blackness behind her lids.

_You know who is to blame._

_Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei, traitorous black brothers..._

_The Kindly Man._

_Valar morghulis._

* * *

_She knows death; has known him and has held his hand clutched tightly to her breast, so why should this fell her? Death and loss and betrayal are to her as nursery songs and garden games are to other girls. Why, then, should this death be as a hammer thrust into her chest?_

_She has known love before; has loved her father, her mother, her brothers, Sansa (when she could be troubled to admit it), Nymeria; even Syrio Forel and Gendry, in her way (she might not have named it as love at the time, but now, she can see it for what it was. For what it is). She has loved them all and lost them all, too. Some were lost to death, some to circumstance, and some to the ambitions of unscrupulous men. But this loss... She does not understand the power of it, but that does not lessen her pain. Perhaps, she thinks (and quite correctly, too), perhaps it is that she has never been a man's_ reason _, and has never had him be hers. Not until Jaqen. So, yes, she has loved, and she has lost, but she has never been in love and lost. Not before she walked through the ebony and weirwood doors flanked by Faceless assassins. Not before she was led to the dark pool in the main temple chamber by the principal elder. Not before she was commanded and then corralled and then crushed into dust beneath the unmerciful heel of the order._

_The ache of it exceeds her capacity to fathom it. The desolation achieves such totality that there is little room for thoughts which do not include it. The torment makes her entirely wretched and she feels as though she is unable to bear the weight of it. But she cannot allow herself to fall down. Not now. If she does, she may never rise again and it will have been better to have died at the point of the Kindly Man's blade, next to_ him _. Next to her reason._

_No, she cannot allow herself to fall down now, but neither can she tuck this anguish away in her little box of unwanted feelings. She is adept at that game but the game has changed too much. It is different now and these rules, she has not mastered. This skill, she does not possess. How does she put Jaqen away so that she may keep her feet; so that she may keep breathing? How does she put him away so that she can stop her insides from screaming and screaming and then flying apart, in a thousand directions? How can she hold him and love him and need him but not dissolve into nothingness after his nothingness? How is she not consumed by the pyre along with him? A part of her, a large part perhaps, wants nothing more than that; to leave this world on the draft of his ashes and follow him to the stars. She thinks that if there are Nightlands, she will surely find him there, and if there are not, then leaving the world on his heels would at least be a mercy, for living on when he does not seems... nonsensical; impossible; unendurable. A part of her wants peace and silence and stillness and nothingness, for it seems better than this rending of her mind and this deep misery which cracks her bones open and freezes all of her blood in her veins until it no longer flows to or from her heart, leaving in her place only a stone likeness of a girl._

_A girl who was once loved and wanted beyond all measure and who saw it all slip through her fingers._

_But there is another part of her, small and quiet, and that part sees a different way. That part takes the form of her little voice, and it whispers to her. It tells her things. It tells her that she wants more than nothingness. It says that she should want more than peace. It tells her, oh, it tells her that she is meant for blood and for steel and that she cannot fall down now because she_ must _be standing._

_She must be standing if she is to have her revenge._

* * *

Her eyes flew open.

There was a certainty in her then. A purpose. A _reason._

_She knew then that she would do whatever was required. She must not succumb to her grief. She must not descend into the depths of it. She must not fall down._

_There was work to be done._

No surface reflected her face just then, no mirror, no pool, no candle-lit glass, but she felt the malicious smile twist her features and she knew exactly what expression she wore. She did not need to see herself to understand the look of dark joy born of her own resolve; the malevolent exultation wrought by her vow of vengeance.

Even if the price for it was her own life, she would make him pay.

* * *

The Cat was having difficulty making sense of the scene before her, weighed down still by the effects of the waif's potion (and all she had seen and all she had dreamed). Her eyes burned, straining to focus on the images that flashed with each blink of her lids. Flickering light, two men, shifting shadows cast against dark stone walls... After a moment, she realized that she had awakened in her cell, in the presence of two faceless assassins: the Bear and the handsome man.

_Such strange and confusing dreams._ She rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands.

"Your prayer has changed," the handsome man remarked grimly as he noted the Cat's eyes fluttering open.

_Jaqen had once warned her that she talked in her sleep._

"Sister," the Bear hailed hoarsely. "Are you alright? You were so restless."

_Restless?_ She supposed he meant while she slept. Or, dreamt, rather. And she was restless still. There was no reprieve for her; no brief and merciful interlude where her memory was devoid of the image of Jaqen with his head bowed beneath the Kindly Man's sword. It did not take her a moment to recall the loss of the previous night. _Her unfathomable and unbearable loss._ She did not have the blissful space of time where she believed everything was as it had been until sleep receded and recollection stole her peace. The horror had not left her, not for an instant. She awoke already ( _still?)_ feeling the gnawing of bottomless grief in her middle and a painful frost wrapped itself around her heart before the images of her dream had even faded, chaining her to her anguish and heralding her mentor's absence.

_Her beloved's absence._

A strange thought came to her then.

_What am I to do with my love now?_ she wondered, her brow creasing and her eyes squeezing shut for a moment. _Will it just die?_

The girl's brother, reacting to the signs of her distress, dropped to his knees by her bedside and leaned across the mattress, seeking her hand. Finding it, he clasped it with his own and pulled it to his lips, placing a hard kiss against her knuckles. She blinked then but said nothing.

"Forgive me," the boy begged hoarsely.

"There is nothing to forgive," the girl murmured. He buried his face in her blanket, the top of his head nestled at the curve of her waist. She dropped her hand lightly against his temple, softly running her fingers through the hair above his ear.

"How sweet," the handsome man commented in bored tones. He then directed his gaze at the large boy. "Now that you see she is fine, perhaps you ought to tend to your... more pressing duties."

The Bear raised his head then and glared up at the master suspiciously.

"She will be quite safe with me," the assassin assured the Lyseni. The boy's mistrust seemed to exasperate the handsome man. "Time is short. See to your travel arrangements."

"Travel arrangements?" the girl croaked, pushing herself up on her elbows. "Bear, where are you going?"

The boy started to speak but a look from the master assassin hushed him.

"Let the boy be, little wolf. He has duties just now."

"I'll be back, Cat," the Lyseni promised, staring past her and glowering at the handsome man as he stood to leave. The large boy glanced at his sister once more and gave her a sad sort of smile and a small nod of his head before he turned on his heel and left the cell.

"Where is he going?" the girl demanded once the Bear had closed her door behind him. She sat up the rest of the way and propped her back against the headboard of her bed.

"He'll be back," the master replied dismissively, flicking his hand vaguely at the door as if physically waving the matter away. He was sitting in the one chair in her room, peering at her as he tilted his head back to rest it against to wall behind him.

"You seem strangely at ease for a man who has just betrayed his brother."

"Little wolf, it's flattering that you think me so important to the order that I would be included in every design and scheme enacted in the name of the Faceless Men, but I assure you, I am not privy to all of the principal elder's plans."

"So you didn't know?"

"No, I didn't know, but neither was I surprised. Did I not warn you?"

She ignored his question.

"You may not have known, but you still betrayed him! You didn't lift a finger to help!" she accused.

"I did!" he insisted, leaning forward, affronted. "I helped _you_."

"What? No! You pulled me away! You kept me from him; from _helping_ him!"

The handsome man snorted and the Cat clenched her fists, curling her hands around her sheets so tightly that her fingers ached. She did not think she could bear this assassin's smirks or derision or sarcasm. Not today. She shook with the effort to control her temper.

"What do you suppose would have happened to you if you had been allowed to interfere? If I had let you go to him?" He spat the question at her, and his tone revealed just how stupid he found her assessment of the situation to be. "And what's more, what do you suppose my Lorathi brother would have said if I had asked him what his desire was in that moment? Would he have wished me to allow you to march to your own slaughter? Or would he have wanted me to try to save you from yourself?"

_Save me from myself?_ the girl pondered. It sounded exactly like something Jaqen would say, but she was not ready to release her grudge. She was too full of her own rage; rage at being once again flattened by the helplessness she had spent years steeling herself against. Yet, here she was, helpless once more and subject to the will of men she could not control. It only served to fuel the anger that fought for dominance with the grief inside of her. _Endless grief. Endless rage._

_Mice do not rage,_ her little voice jeered. _They scamper back to their safe place. They scurry away to hide in holes._

_Helpless and Hopeless._

"No!" she muttered through gritted teeth, unaware she had spoken out loud. One side of the handsome man's mouth curled up then and he gave a small laugh at her utterance. The sound of his amusement was nothing more than a small puff of air expelled through his nose but it burned away what little control she had; snapped the invisible cords which held her to her mattress. She flew at him then, fingers extended like talons, meaning to claw the expression from his face; meaning to obliterate his smirk and gouge out his eyes so that he could not assault her with his contemptuous gaze.

Swiftly, the master assassin rose from the chair and caught the girl's thin wrists in his hands, barely avoiding the fingers which jabbed at his eyes. The Cat's frustration at being thwarted burst out of her in a shriek and she thrust her head upward, butting him hard against the underside of his chin, causing him to bite his tongue. It was his turn to exhibit frustration and he grunted in pain and irritation, throwing her violently onto her bed and quickly moving to pin her in place with his own body.

"Enough!" he barked, tasting the salt and copper of his own blood.

She ignored him and struggled futilely against his weight, breathing heavily with her efforts and her vexation at allowing herself to once again be pinned by him. She pushed against the master's chest with her palms and when he did not budge, she pulled one hand free of him and slapped his cheek as hard as she could. Her own palm burned and throbbed with the force of it. His face was turned by the blow and an imprint of her hand appeared nearly instantly on his flesh, at first pale but then flushing angry red. Slowly, the assassin turned to face the girl trapped beneath him, taking her wrists once again in his hands and restraining her.

"Do you feel better now?" he growled.

Something that was a mixture of laughter and sobbing bubbled up in her throat and exploded out of her at the question.

_Better?_

She would never be better, she was sure of it. _Never._

Her mirthless laughter became savage and she felt herself careening into hysteria. Her head ached and her chest burned with the force of it.

_You are too close to slipping away,_ her little voice warned. _You must not fall down now. You must be stronger than your pain or else your enemies will go unpunished._

_Yes, good. Logic, not emotion. Rule your face. Rule your thoughts. Rule your intentions. Calm as still water._

The Cat bit her lower lip in a bid for some semblance of control. She was shaking violently, as if she had plunged through the ice over a frozen river and was then dragged up, left panting on a snowy bank to either recover or die. She fought to master the quaking in her voice, so that she might be understood when she addressed the handsome man.

"I don't understand," she told him quietly, speaking after she had regained her composure.

"What don't you understand, my girl?"

Her face screwed up into an expression of distaste when he said _my girl_.

"How could you do it? How could you let this happen to me? To _him_? How..."

"How? But it's so simple, little wolf. When I was asked to make the choice between my personal feelings and my duty to the order, I chose wisely."

She sneered.

"Wise, yes, perhaps. If _wise_ means doing whatever saves your own miserable hide," the Cat returned bitterly. "But that does not mean it was the _right_ choice."

"Do you know what the interesting thing about the right choice is, little wolf?" he asked casually, moving his face closer to hers so that his lips nearly touched her ear. The brush of his breath over her skin sent a shiver racing down her spine and he continued in a bare whisper, "It's that the look of it changes depending on where you are standing when you make it."

The handsome man felt the girl stiffen beneath him and pulled back so that he could examine her expression. She gave him a hateful look but there was something vulnerable about her storm cloud eyes and it caused the assassin to sigh.

"Not all of us had your sweet kisses to inform our decisions," he murmured then, sounding both acerbic and despondent, all at once. "Not all of us could be guided by the transcendent aspirations of love..."

"Don't you dare mock me!" the Cat cried out, interrupting him. She was seething.

"Some of us had only our reason and our instinct to rely upon when making our choices," he continued as if she had not spoken.

"So it was your _instinct_ that led you to forsake your brother?"

"Yes, partly," the master replied, unruffled. "And partly, it was my desire to protect _you_."

The girl scoffed at that. She knew that she was being unkind, but the thought of her own cruelty did not trouble her in the least.

"If you ever did one single thing that wasn't entirely selfish, I might well die of shock," the Cat replied caustically.

"I shall remember it, and will endeavor to avoid such a tragic outcome," the assassin said lightly, but she thought she could detect a note of hurt in his tone. "And why is all of your venom reserved for me, anyway? What about your brother? Was he not there as well? Did he not stand idly by while you made the _right choice_ to disobey?"

"He tried to save me from all of this, more than once. And by the time we were in the temple, he could not have helped me, even if he wanted to," the girl muttered in defense of the Bear, turning her face to the side so she could avoid the master's probing gaze.

"Was he not in control of his own will?" The question was both rhetorical and sarcastic but the Cat answered it anyway.

"No, he was not."

Silence descended over them and after a moment, the girl felt the handsome man's fingers release one of her wrists so that he could grasp her chin and turn her face, forcing her to look at him.

"You can control the actions of men now."

It was a statement, not a question.

"I..." She hesitated, then admitted, "Sometimes. I mean, I think I can, sometimes. I... tried. I think it worked. It felt like... It felt like it worked."

"You knew he would try to help you and you stopped him. You did it to save him."

Again, the handsome man was stating it as fact, not asking for confirmation.

The girl blew out a long breath and then said, "I feared he might jump to my defense. I knew my life was forfeit. I did not want my brother to die in vain."

"Yet you scold me now for not throwing my life away in some impossible and misguided attempt to thwart the will of the Many-Faced god?"

"This was not the will of Him of Many-Faces," the Cat hissed, "and if _you_ had joined me, it would not have been an impossible attempt!"

The master's hard look softened and he sighed.

"Once again, you flatter me with your faith in my blade skills, little one, but I assure you, even the two of us together are no match for your _Kindly Man_."

All at once, the handsome man could feel the tension leave the girl. Her taut muscles relaxed and the furrow in her brow transformed itself into a smooth plane of perfect, white skin. She looked up at him with her wide eyes, rendered silvery and shining by the flickering candlelight. The assassin did not resist the impulse to press a soft kiss on her forehead and then he released her other wrist and pushed himself away from her, still preventing her retreat and holding her in place but supporting a portion of his weight on his forearms.

"I know that I am being unfair to you," the girl started and the handsome man thought to offer a protest, some eloquent evidence of his generosity and capacity for mercy, but then she continued, "but I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive you for this."

The assassin's voice was flat as he spoke. "Yet you absolved your brother so easily."

"I know," she whispered. "I said I was being unfair. But you were his _brother_. The Bear is _my_ brother. Jaqen was nothing to him. But to you..."

The Myrish master pushed himself away from the girl completely and stood then, his back turned to her.

"You don't have to tell me what he was to me. You are not the only one who grieves, little wolf."

In an instant, her tension was back and a shrill quality crept into her voice.

"Oh, he was so important to you, was he? You grieve for him now?" she sputtered spitefully. "You _grieve_ when you might have prevented it!"

The handsome man turned to face the girl as she spoke. She had moved to sit on the edge of her bed.

"No, my girl, I could never have prevented it. Only you and he could have done that."

The Cat drew in a sharp breath, his words piercing her right through her core. She wanted to be offended by the assassin's words. She wanted to be outraged, but she could not be, for he was only saying what she has been thinking all along. _It was her fault._ And just like that, her enmity and resentment toward the master evaporated and were replaced by guilt. Her shoulders slumped visibly.

The handsome man took in her posture and understood her emotion then. He had not meant to accuse her but he knew she had read his words that way. He stepped closer, reaching out for her, sliding his hand over her shoulder and up her neck, his palm coming to rest against her jaw. The girl started to recoil, but something inside of her stopped the reaction; some need for comfort, even if that comfort could never be enough; even if that comfort came from the wrong man. She leaned into the assassin's palm, seeking the contact, wanting the touch. Her acquiescence surprised the Myrish master and he bent down slightly, taking her by the elbow and guiding her to stand. He wrapped his arms around the girl's small frame and pulled her in close, tucking her head beneath his chin. After a minute, he felt her shaking but it wasn't until he detected the dampness seeping through his robe and onto his chest that he realized she was silently crying.

"Don't, little wolf," he whispered, shushing her and squeezing her tighter. "Don't."

"I'm sorry," the Cat rasped. "I'm so sorry I failed. I'm sorry I put him there in the first place. I'm sorry I couldn't save him. I'm sorry..."

"Shhh. Don't. That was never your purpose. You are not to blame."

A vague memory of her dream nudged its way into her thoughts then. Her father, sitting atop his icy tomb, acquitting her.

_That was never your purpose, sweet girl. You were not made for that. You bear none of the blame for him or for me._

But she did bear the blame. Her guilt told her she did, and she was nearly crushed under the weight of the knowledge. The handsome man tried to soothe her, whispering platitudes and kneading the muscles in her back with his fingers but all of it only served to make her feel worse, for wanting the succor but not feeling worthy of it. She desired absolution that she believed she had no claim to and it only compounded the guilt that she felt. She began to cry harder.

_Your tears are of no use,_ her little voice said. _Quit being stupid._

_I can't help it,_ she argued internally.

_If you cannot rule your own face, how do you expect to be able to do what must be done?_ the little voice asked.

_I'm allowed to mourn!_ she insisted. _Am I made of stone?_

_Do you wish to mourn Jaqen, or do you wish to avenge him?_

Slowly, her tears abated. She sniffed and pulled away from the handsome master's embrace, looking up at him with red-rimmed eyes and an indecipherable expression.

"I'm alright," she lied.

_Good,_ her little voice commented. _Now, remember._

_Remember what?_ she asked, though she knew the answer.

_Remember who is really to blame._

* * *

They had removed all of the daggers from her cell before they brought her back there, probably while she was in the tunnel with the Bear. She supposed it was a wise decision, considering her emotional state, but being without her steel left her feeling a little disoriented. The blade she always wore at her wrist had been removed as well, though when, she was not sure. She imagined the handsome man had used his masterful sleight of hand during some part of the struggle to get her to her cell. She was sure the action would have gone unnoticed while she was screaming and kicking and fighting to get to...

_No._

She told herself not to think about it just then. She could not allow herself to fall apart. Not now. _She had more important things to consider._

A knock at the Cat's cell door caught her by surprise but the handsome man's face revealed nothing.

_He was expecting someone,_ the girl thought.

The assassin opened the door to reveal the Kindly Man standing in the acolytes' passageway, his appearance typically upright and tidy, his deep blue eyes as piercing as ever. He showed no signs of having endured a struggle, either physically or mentally, but appeared rested and refreshed. The girl found herself bothered by that tremendously and her fury boiled up within her but her little voice spoke then and calmed her.

_Patience,_ it counseled her. _Watch. Listen._

"Excuse us, brother," the elder said simply, and the handsome man gave him a nod before offering the girl pointed look that seemed to say _behave yourself_ before he left the chamber.

"You failed your test rather spectacularly," the Kindly Man intoned as soon as the handsome master had closed the door behind him.

"Do you wonder at it?"

"Not at all, child, but I had hoped..."

"You had _hoped_ I would murder my master?"

"To deliver the gift is not murder, child, or haven't you learned anything during your years here?" the elder responded mildly. The girl watched the Kindly Man cross her floor and she remained wary. He pretended not to notice her tension or the scrutiny in her eyes as he approached her one chair. Indicating the seat, he asked politely, "May I?"

The girl snorted slightly and rolled her eyes but gave a curt nod of her head to indicate he was welcome to sit. She remained standing, arms across her chest.

The Kindly Man settled himself in the chair, his impeccable posture and straight shoulders causing his robe to fall in perfectly straight planes. His long fingers formed a pyramid under his chin and gave him a look of contemplation. He studied the girl as she stood on the opposite side of the bed from him, his eyes settling on her for longer than was comfortable for her, though she thought she hid her uneasiness well. Finally, he spoke.

"I see now that I have done you a great disservice, Arya."

The Cat might have been caught more off-guard by his use of her name had she not been gaping at him incredulously over his other phrasing. _Disservice? Killing Jaqen was a... disservice?_ Her fingers curled into her palms, nails biting the calloused flesh there. She fought to stop herself from screaming at him.

"What... _disservice_?" the girl forced herself to ask.

"You could never have made a Faceless Man," he replied, smiling balefully at her. "It was reckless of me to allow you to even try." He did not say it as an insult; there was no judgment or derision in his voice. He stated it as plainly as he might have told her she was wearing a black and white acolyte's robe that she no longer had a right to don. It was not judgment, no. It was merely observation. "I should have sent you away long ago. It was a mistake to allow a highborn lady to train among us. You could never fully give up who you were."

Of course, what he did not say to her was that he _encouraged_ her identity. Subtly, to be sure, but there was no denying it. He had encouraged her, refusing to punish her for her failures and her stubbornness, allowing her to always be partly Arya Stark, even as he chastised her for her inability to let go of her first self. _Arya Stark_ was a valuable thing to have in one's pocket.

Very valuable.

The Kindly Man sighed, the sound of it wistful; melancholy.

"Why did you let me to stay, then?" she asked.

"I allowed my personal feelings, my respect for your master, to interfere with my duty, I'm afraid."

"You're blaming Jaqen," the Cat said in a low voice, frowning.

"It was my mistake, and now two of my brothers lie dead upon the temple floor," he said, notes of sorrow in his tone, but the grief did not reach his bright eyes. She wondered if maybe he was a bit... _proud_ of her. She shook off the strange feeling that the thought gave her.

"Three," the girl corrected harshly.

"What's that, child?"

" _Three_ of your brothers lie dead."

He looked at her with bemusement.

"You forgot Jaqen H'ghar," the girl continued, and when she said his name, her voice broke.

"There is no _Jaqen H'ghar_."

She tasted blood as she bit the inside of her cheek.

"You're wrong," the girl said slowly.

The elder shook his head at her as if he believed she was missing his point.

"My dear, you slaughtered a priest and a master."

"Valar morghulis," the Cat replied instantly.

He gave her an icy look.

"Have you nothing more to say?"

"Yes, I have something more to say," she spat a little wildly. "I say that you killed the closest thing to a son that you ever had. I slaughtered two of your men? Well, you slaughtered your _best_ man! And, whether you admit it or not, you killed your own child."

There was no hesitation in the Kindly Man's reply, but his voice was soft and low.

"Ah, but he was never mine, was he? At least, not once you arrived."

She said nothing and stared past him, settling her gaze upon her dark stone wall, intense hatred illuminating her eyes.

"Jealousy?" the girl whispered. "Is that it? If you couldn't have his devotion, then neither could I?"

"The Many-Faced god does not entertain such base emotions as jealousy."

"No, but the principal elder might."

The old man shook his head, looking as if he pitied the girl, a slight frown shaping his mouth.

"You mistake me," the elder insisted. "I do not desire for myself. I do not covet what other men have. I only ever want what is best for the order. It is the only thing for which I strive."

"Then you have failed," the Cat replied with certainty, "because _he_ was best for the order."

The Kindly Man sighed and fixed the girl with his gaze.

"What am I to do with you now, child?"

The girl did not wish to admit that his uncertainty frightened her. But, of course, there was no uncertainty, not really, and in the end, he did as he had always planned to do.

He put her on a ship to Westeros.

* * *

She didn't take much with her. She did not want her acolyte's robe; she was no longer an acolyte. When the Bear came to fetch her, she stood in her master's long, grey blouse and her breeches, holding a leather satchel tucked under her arm. It contained her quilted doublet, her shift, her corset (which she abhorred but found practical at times for the small, hidden blade pocket it boasted), an extra set of small clothes, and the fine sleeping gown and purple robe gifted to a widow by a Pentoshi ship's captain. She never wore them, but neither could she leave them behind. A heavy iron coin weighted her pocket. It was all she was taking from within the temple. Her brother placed his hand on hers and his simple touch steadied her.

"Travel arrangements?" the Cat asked simply.

"They were for us," he acknowledged. "Remember when I japed that maybe if we were ever exiled, they might send us together?"

"Who knew you were a prophet?" the girl remarked in jest, but neither was in the mood to laugh.

"I think sending me with you serves two purposes. First, it's no secret how close we are. They know I would rather die than let anything happen to you..."

"Bear..."

"And second, I don't think they trust me very much now. This is probably the only mission they can be sure I won't abandon."

"I'm sorry," she whispered, squeezing his arm.

"What are you sorry for, sister?" the boy asked. "Are you sorry for making the choice that I wish I could have made? For being braver than me? For having the courage to defy them for the sake of... what you loved best?"

He picked her hand up and held it close to his face, concentrating on its contours, studying the sinew and veins beneath the fair skin, tracing the small scars with his eyes.

"Brother, the choice you were given was no choice at all, and I am not some courageous heroine..."

"No, sister, you _are_. And you were forced to do it alone." His voice betrayed his sense of shame. "I could have helped you! I should have..."

"No, you couldn't have and no, you _shouldn't_ have. If you had..." She looked up at his face then and whispered, "I would have nothing left. I would have no one."

"The two of us together might have..."

"The two of us together would have made no difference," the Cat admitted. "Please don't berate yourself. Even in the midst of it all, I knew there was no way that you could..."

"Is that why you pushed me away?"

The girl was quiet for a minute.

"You knew?" she finally asked.

"I didn't understand at the time. But then I stood here, in this spot, and watched you sleep all night after... well, _after._ It gave me a lot of time to think. I couldn't understand why I felt chained in place. I couldn't understand my own cowardice. I wanted to help you! I reached for my sword and then... _nothing._ I thought... that is, I _hoped_..."

"You are right, brother. Be at ease, it was not you. It was me."

The relief on his face was palpable and he pulled her into an embrace.

"I couldn't fathom how I could have saved you only to sacrifice you," the Lyseni murmured against the top of her head. "I am glad that was not the case."

"You are no coward, Bear. I just couldn't allow it," his sister told him. "One of us needed to live. What I can't understand, though, is how _both_ of us now live. Why didn't they kill me, too? I'm the one who failed my test. Why am I still alive?"

"No one has told you?"

She shook her head.

"Well, you can be sure there is a reason," the boy said grimly. "There is always a reason."

"I know."

The girl pulled away from her brother's arms and they left her cell, making their way down the corridor. The two friends entered the stairwell, speaking quietly.

"You could never have done it," the Bear stated. "So, why ask? Why _this_ task for you?"

"Perhaps it was the only thing that would truly prove I could make a Faceless Man. Apparently, the principal elder has doubted all along."

"Perhaps," the Lyseni murmured, but he seemed dubious. Whatever his theory regarding the reason, however, he chose not to share it with her just then.

They emerged from the stairwell and the large assassin looped his arm through his sister's, leading her into the main temple chamber. All of the surviving members of the guild who remained in Braavos lined the walls, watching the two friends silently make their way toward the ebony and weirwood doors. The Kindly Man blocked their path, standing just before their exit. He ignored his newest assassin and focused his gaze on the Cat.

The principal elder looked at the girl sadly, saying, "Were you any other acolyte, I would not find it half so hard to let you go."

" _Let_ me go?" the girl scoffed. "Exile me, you mean."

"Tell me truly, child, do you wish to remain now?"

Arya narrowed her eyes and looked away from the elder, frowning. She did not want to give him the satisfaction of an answer, but her bitter expression made her desire to quit the temple all too plain.

"No, I suspected not. So yes, I am letting you go." He studied her angry stance and sighed. "You never change, child. You are still ruled by your rage. Always selfish. Always short-sighted. Always whispering that hateful little prayer."

"I never change?" she mused quietly, turning her face to his, catching his eyes with her own. "That's simply not true, for only recently, I have found reason to alter my _hateful little prayer_." She bored into him with her gaze as she thought of the name she had added to the end of her chant: _The Kindly Man._

The elder regarded her with a mixture of amusement and respect for her boldness, and said, "Then I shall not say goodbye, for it seems we shall meet again someday."

"Oh, yes," the Cat said, her voice soft and her face devoid of emotion. "Yes, you may count on it. Someday soon."

The elder placed his hands upon her shoulders and held her at arm's length, his eyes searching hers, looking for something. She stared right back at him, her face blank, and almost involuntarily, she slipped into his head, or tried to, at least. When she did, she felt like she was being wrapped in a thick, warm blanket, and it made her feel almost at ease, as if she were being cared for and loved and held in arms that wished only to protect her. Yet, there was something else, too; something unpleasant about the feeling, as if that thick, warm blanket covered over her mouth and nose and made it hard for her to breathe; as if she was sinking beneath the still, dark waters of a deep pool, drowning and dying but unable to do anything to save herself. She gleaned nothing more than those feelings, and they were not _his,_ anyway, not directly, but merely the way she felt when she tried to read him. She could not comprehend the _why_ of it, but the Kindly Man must have understood something then, or found what he sought in her eyes, for he smiled slyly and bent to place a kiss upon her brow.

"Valar morghulis, Arya Stark," the elder said, his farewell to her delivered in his typical rich, resonant tone.

The girl looked at him and took in his smile, his gaze, and the feel of his hands upon her shoulders. She thought of Jaqen, of the Kindly Man's longsword poised above her master's neck, and she responded with her own farewell.

"Yes. Valar morghulis," she agreed, and then she walked through the ebony and weirwood doors with the Bear close at her heels.

* * *

The Cat walked down the stone stairs leading away from the entrance to the House of Black and White, her brother's steadying arm wrapped around her, and with each step she took, she felt a mixture of relief and remorse. She saw a figure waiting for them on the street.

_Brother Rat._

"What's _he_ doing here?" the girl hissed.

"Calm yourself, Cat. He's coming, too."

" _What_?" she cried. "What do you mean, _he's coming too_? Is this some sort of trick?"

"The principal elder felt it was safer for you this way."

She snorted.

"He thought you should have two escorts."

"Why should the elder even care?" the girl asked skeptically.

"I'd like to know that myself," the Bear replied. "All I know is that he does."

"Where is he sending me that is so dangerous I require _two_ Faceless Men to guarantee my safety?"

"Home, sister."

"I have no home," the girl retorted bitterly. "And I'm no longer your sister."

"You'll always be my sister," the boy said, his voice so quiet that it was almost a whisper, "and _Arya Stark_ has a home."

She stopped short and swallowed hard, staring at her brother. Her mouth suddenly felt very dry.

"What do you mean by that?" she managed to rasp.

"He means for us to take you to Winterfell."

The girl felt dizzy and she clutched at her brother, grabbing a fistful of his tunic to steady herself. The Lyseni reached out for her in alarm, thinking that his sister looked near to a faint. Gently, he lowered the girl to sit upon the stone steps.

"I know it's a shock, sister," the boy murmured sympathetically. "Just breathe. We can discuss this more once we are aboard the ship, but recover yourself first. We have to get to the Purple Harbor."

She said nothing but merely lowered her forehead to rest upon her knees. The Rat was dancing impatiently at the bottom of the stairs.

"Will you two hurry up? I've already been waiting here forever!" the pinch-faced boy groused.

"Do you wish me to carry you?" the Bear whispered to his sister.

"No, I'm fine," she insisted, standing then and feeling the step rock slightly under her as she did. "Here, help me with this."

The large assassin was confused by her meaning but then he saw her struggling with the top of the stone step, her fingers curled around the front of it, shifting it out of its place. He bent to help her and together, they made quick work of moving the flat stone away. The boy was surprised to see a cavity beneath the step and in it, a long package, wrapped in oil cloth.

"Come on!" the Rat insisted. "What are you doing, anyway?"

Arya bent to retrieve the cloth-wrapped object and the Lyseni replaced the stone step. The two continued on then, joining the sour Westerosi on the street.

"About time," the thin boy grumbled, looking the Cat up and down, a sneer forming on his face. He appraised her newly acquired package and demanded, "What is that?"

"Something I couldn't leave behind," was her answer. The rat-faced boy shrugged and the three set off for the Purple Harbor, traveling (at the girl's insistence) through the Armorers District. The Bear accompanied his sister down an alleyway between two shops and followed her around a corner to a grassy patch that existed behind one of the buildings. The earth was soft there and the girl asked for her brother's dagger. He did not hesitate to give it to her, wondering all the while what she was up to. After digging at the grass and dirt for a few minutes, the Cat pulled a wooden box from the ground. She handed the Lyseni's blade back and saw his raised eyebrows, his unspoken question written on his face.

"Something else I couldn't leave behind," she explained, rising from her crouched position and swatting the dirt away from the knees of her breeches.

The boy merely shook his head and smiled at her, offering to carry her box, which she was balancing awkwardly in her arms as she tried to accommodate her satchel and her oil-cloth wrapped package. Instead of handing him the newly retrieved item, she placed it on the ground, pulled the strap of her satchel over her head and shoulder, and then tossed the oilcloth aside, revealing a small, thin blade that appeared to be a child-sized water dancer's sword. This, she slipped into her belt and then picked the box back up.

"There," she said with satisfaction. "Much better."

The Bear smiled at his sister and laughed slightly.

"I'm almost afraid to ask what's in the box," he commented.

"You should be," the Cat returned, and he could not tell if she as serious or if she was japing. "It's the stuff of nightmares." They left the alley and found their brother Rat tapping his toe impatiently.

"Did she satisfy you, brother?" he asked nastily, his meaning clear. When no one replied, he added, "I don't suppose you two could have waited until we were aboard the ship?"

"You'll want to watch your tongue," the girl growled.

"Why?" the Westerosi boy taunted. "It's my understanding that you are incapable of killing a man."

"Brother," the Lyseni cautioned, holding the Cat firmly around her waist. Her hand was on Needle's hilt and he knew that if allowed to draw it, she was unlikely to leave the Rat alive.

"Is this how it's to be now?" the Rat questioned his large brother. "She warms your bed, so you take her side?"

"She warms no man's bed," the Bear said quietly; evenly, "and you're not to speak about her that way again."

The Rat's narrow eyes glared at his two companions but after a moment, he merely shrugged stiffly and muttered, " _Fine_." He turned away from his companions and strode off toward the Purple Harbor. The girl stayed back just long enough to chastise her brother for defending her.

"You don't have to do that," she told him.

"Do what?"

"Defend me."

"I know, but I wanted to."

"You'll poison your relationship with him, and it's a long journey to make while watching your back."

"I trust you to watch it for me," the Bear told her, "just as I'll watch yours."

"You don't have to do that," she grumbled, but her heart wasn't in the complaint. "I am capable of taking care of myself, especially against him."

"I know you are," the Lyseni said, "but I didn't do it for you. I did it because... I just can't stand to hear him say those things about you."

That drew the Cat up short. She gave her brother a look that was part amusement and part amazement.

"It always surprises me," she remarked.

"What does?"

"That someone so strong can have such a soft heart."

"Do you count it a flaw, sister?"

"Not at all, brother. Not at all."

The two friends set off once again, aiming to catch up to the skulking Rat ahead of them.

The three companions spoke little after that, continuing en route to their ship, each lost to his own thoughts. Arya considered if she should slip away from the newly-minted assassins and strike out on her own, but she had no desire to leave the Bear and since it seemed that whatever the Kindly Man's purpose for her was, he at least shared a common goal with her, which was to return home. Because of that, it seemed wise to comply with the plan, at least at the moment. For his part, the Bear wondered if leaving Braavos behind might finally allow him to begin to heal the deep wound left by Olive's death and though his attachment to the order just then was nebulous at best, he did not wish to abandon the Cat. In fact, leaving Braavos with her was probably the best possible outcome of the whole abominable situation. The Rat simply wondered how he would stomach such a long trip trapped aboard a ship with the person he disliked most in the temple. He also wondered when his brother had become so attached to the little Stark bitch.

The trio finally arrived at their destination and the girl could not hide her astonishment and delight when she saw the ship she was meant to board.

" _Titan's Daughter_?" she asked the Bear. "This is the ship that will take us west?"

"Yes," he replied, her tone of surprise causing him confusion. "Do you know it?"

She didn't answer him, but merely thought, _how fitting_ as she readied herself to climb aboard. Before she could start up the gangway, a figure approaching her along the dock caught her eye and she turned her attention to the unexpected visitor.

"What are you doing here?" the Cat asked without preamble.

"I found I couldn't let you leave without saying goodbye," the handsome man told her drolly as he drew near to her.

"Did you consider that I might not wish to see you?" she inquired, her tone equally as droll.

"I did," the master admitted, "and I found that I didn't care."

She couldn't help but to smirk at that.

"You might have made time for a proper farewell when I was still at the temple," the Cat pointed out.

"So many ears. So many eyes," he commented with a shrug.

The Bear insinuated himself between his sister and the handsome man then.

"Is everything alright here, Cat?" the boy asked, his eyes fixed firmly on the handsome assassin, his face grim.

"Everything is fine, boy," the master answered for her.

"I didn't ask _you_ ," the Lyseni countered.

"You'll have her all to yourself soon enough, don't worry. You can afford to give me a moment."

The Bear did not move, though, until his sister placed a hand upon his arm gently and said, "It's fine, Bear. Go ahead and board. I'll join you shortly."

The handsome man and the Cat watched her two companions gain the deck and then the Myrish assassin moved closer to the girl; close enough that she could smell his scent, no longer the cloves he had used to tease her, but more himself; clean, like soap, and a little earthy, like sage. The master looked down at the girl and smiled a little.

"Well?" she prompted. "What was so important to say that you had to come all the way to the Purple Harbor to tell me?"

"It's no one thing, little wolf."

"Then... what?"

The man regarded Arya for a moment, telling her, "I just wished to see you once more, and... I needed to let you know that..."

"Yes?" she prodded impatiently, vexed by his hesitancy.

"You'll be fine, little wolf," he finally said. "Your future is still shining. You'll be just fine."

She felt her heart clench and thought, _No, I'll never really be fine again._ She couldn't say that to him, though. She couldn't admit it out loud, because she was afraid that if she allowed herself to speak those words, she would collapse, and she knew she must not do that. Instead, she took a moment to steady herself and then smoothed her features and played her part.

The Cat regarded the handsome man's face, keeping her own visage expressionless and her voice steady.

"My future is shining?" she mused. "Does it make you feel better to think so?"

"For once, can we leave behind this... antagonism? You are leaving Braavos and not everything I say has to be a challenge or a test. I simply want to tell you goodbye and..."

The assassin seemed to be struggling to say what he was thinking.

_Perhaps he is afraid he will collapse as well,_ her little voice suggested. _He lost his brother._

_He let his brother go,_ the girl countered _. There is a difference._

_He is hurting, too,_ the voice persisted but Arya would not give in to it.

_It was his choice. No one pulled him away from the fight._

"Well, well," the girl began in a flippant tone, "I never thought I would see the day when you were at a loss for words. What must that be like for you?"

The handsome man grabbed Arya's shoulders so swiftly that it caught her off guard and she let out a small gasp.

"Look," he hissed, shaking her a little, "there is no time for this! You... have somehow become... _important_ to me. I just needed for you to know that and I also need to know that you won't do anything _stupid._ I want you to promise me that you'll take care of yourself in that savage land that my brother lured you away from!"

The girl was too stunned to speak for a moment and then she gave the assassin a sad look.

"You poor, poor man," she whispered, reaching out to stroke his cheek softly. "You only realize what's important to you when it's too late to do anything about it."

"I don't know what you mean." His tone seemed scornful but he did not pull away from her touch.

"Jaqen's gone, and now both of your apprentices are leaving you. What will you do? Who will you have?"

She could have said it mockingly, but she seemed genuinely concerned. The handsome man smiled his most dazzling smile at her. It was a smile meant to distract.

"Don't worry your pretty head about me, little wolf. I'll manage somehow. You just be sure to stay safe. Westeros is barbaric now."

"It was always barbaric, and I managed to survive it anyway."

"Remember what I have taught you," he persisted.

"Is that all?"

"Yes, that's all," he shrugged. The girl surprised him by leaning into him and raising herself on her toes. She placed a quick kiss on his jaw and then whispered to him.

"I once said that I thought you would make a very fine friend," Arya reminded the master. He nodded, indicating that he recalled her words. She pressed her cheek to his and he could feel her smile against him. "I wish that you had," she continued. "I really wish that you had."

She turned to leave then, but he stopped her with a hand on her wrist.

"No, wait."

The girl turned to the handsome man expectantly. He reached out for her other hand and pressed something against her palm. She brought her hand closer to her face to inspect what he had given her and was surprised to see that it was an iron coin. Her head snapped up and he regarded her disbelieving expression.

"Please don't die of shock," the assassin japed. "I know how skeptical you are that I am capable of doing anything that isn't _entirely selfish_."

"But... why would you..." the girl sputtered.

"It may have taken me a while, but I finally came to understand why my brother felt that you were worth this," the master explained, reaching out and closing the girl's hand around the coin, hiding it from view. She found herself fighting tears yet again that day.

"I can't take it," she told him. "You have to keep it."

"No. It's mine to give and I need to know that you will have some way back, if you have need of it. If you have need of _me._ "

The girl shook her head violently.

"What if you have need of it?" she questioned. "I just can't..."

"Consider it a nameday present."

The handsome man had surprised her once again. Her eyes widened.

"I wasn't aware that you even knew," she whispered. "I had forgotten myself."

"Some things I make a point of finding out," he replied. "Some things are worth knowing."

The girl sighed and then told him that she couldn't keep his gift.

"Why ever not, my girl?"

"The night before my trial," the Cat began, swallowing hard, "Jaqen gave me his iron coin."

The handsome man looked shocked for a moment, but then he burst out laughing, tilting his head back and staring at the sky.

"Of course he did," he finally said, his laughter dying away. The assassin threw his hands up, a small gesture of surrender. "Of course he did. He had already given his coin away, years ago, but even still, I should have expected it. I'm second, after all. One must know one's place." He seemed to be talking to himself more than her, almost as if he was thinking out loud. "He was always just a bit faster, just a bit better, wasn't he?"

Arya wasn't sure what to say. The master seemed to reach a decision then.

"Keep it anyway."

"How can I?" she whispered. "It doesn't seem... right. You might need it. It's not right for me to have two."

"Do you know what the interesting thing about the right choice is, little wolf?" the handsome man asked. He gave her a small smile, shaking his head as if suddenly resigning himself to his fate. He looked at her so sweetly then that she felt like her heart was breaking. A tear escaped her lashes then and trekked slowly down her cheek. He reached out and brushed it away, saying, "None of that, my girl. None of that."

She flung herself into his arms, crying in earnest then.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" she moaned miserably as he shushed her, cradling her close.

"Whatever for, silly girl?"

She laughed through her tears, "I don't know. Everything, I suppose."

"Oh, is that all?" he japed. "Just everything? Very well, then. I accept your apology."

The master stroked her hair and they embraced in silence for a long moment before the girl spoke again.

"Thank you," Arya whispered.

"And what are you thanking me for?"

"For... everything."

"Oh," he sighed softly. "Is that all? Just everything?"

"Will I ever see you again?" she asked, sniffling.

"Well, you have two iron coins now, my girl. I shall be affronted if you do not!"

They both laughed at that and then Arya pulled back slightly from the handsome man so that she could give him a long look.

"May I ask you for a favor?" she wanted to know.

"Anything."

"Look out for little Syrio."

He nodded, his face solemn.

"It will be my pleasure. Perhaps I can finally teach someone to successfully avoid being pinned. I shall make it a particular goal."

She snorted but then she looked serious again.

"Be well," she whispered. "Valar morghulis."

"Safe travels, little wolf. You would have made a fine assassin." His arms fell away from her and he took a step back, saying, "Valar dohaeris."

The handsome man watched the Cat climb aboard _Titan's Daughter_ and after she gained the deck and waved down at him, he gave her a small salute and seemed to say something to her, his mouth forming a single word. She could not hear him, of course, but it gave her the queerest sensation, as if that one word contained a very great secret. She did not have time to ponder it before he was walking away. She watched his retreating form until he disappeared around a corner and she could not explain the feeling of loss that tacked itself on to her already overloaded emotional state. She was certain she had not shed so many tears in all the years of her life combined as she had since the previous sunset. The Bear drew near to her then and looked down at her. She could read the concern on his face.

"I'm as well as can be expected," she told him before he could ask. "Don't worry for me. Go and get yourself settled."

The boy nodded but before he left her, both the ship's captain and the rat-faced boy approached.

Ternesio Terys met with the Faceless Men and their charge on deck. He nodded his greeting and spoke to them in Braavosi but when he saw the Cat, he did a double take and then gasped.

"Salty?" the ship's captain asked uncertainly in the common tongue. "Can it be?"

"Captain Terys," the girl greeted respectfully.

"My, how you've grown," the man observed after a moment.

"Children often do," was her noncommittal reply.

"I am glad to see you so hale and healthy," was his.

"Likewise. And how fare your sons, Denyo and Yorko?"

She said their names so as to prove that she had kept her promise to remember them. All Braavosi understood that there was a certain protection to having your name known by the Faceless Men. _Of course, that hadn't saved Jaqen._

The captain looked sad then, saying, "We lost Yorko to a fever two years past."

"Oh, I am sorry," Arya condoled.

Ternesio nodded, then said, "But Denyo has changed so much! He's a foot taller, at least! He has grown into a fine man. You'll surely see him on this voyage. He's down below now, securing the cargo. He will be most pleased to see you again, I am sure. He still talks about your journey across the narrow sea as if it was some great adventure."

"I think perhaps it was," the girl said, casting her memory back to that time, four years ago. It was the first time she had ever stepped foot on a ship. "At least, for me."

The captain glanced at her companions who were proceeding across the deck, greeting the crew, and leaned in to say, "I think perhaps you have also changed a great deal, yes? You are... something quite different than you were when last we met, I believe. Something more?"

"Yes," she agreed. "More. Yet... perhaps less than I ought to have been."

This seemed to make some sort of sense to the captain and he smiled and nodded, saying that she was to have her own cabin, just like when she had last traveled aboard _Titan's Daughter._ The familiarity of it wrought a small shudder from her and the captain asked if she was quite well.

"I am fine. I think, though... I think I will stay on deck for a while, and watch your preparations, if you don't mind. I promise to stay out of the way. I only wish to feel the salt air on my face for a while longer."

"Of course, my dear, of course. I would not rush you off. Retire to your cabin as you will. It is such a pleasure to see you. I had thought we would be carrying the Lorathi west, but this is a most welcome surprise."

Her heart leapt into her throat at his words.

"The Lorathi?"

"Yes, he originally booked the passage for himself, and we were to have left already."

"Yesterday morning," she whispered.

"Just so," the man agreed, oblivious to the ache hidden in her tone. "But the House of Black and White was quite generous when they requested a change in plans and now to see that it was _you_ we were waiting for, well, the delay seems most worthwhile." He smiled at her and patted her arm, excusing himself to direct his crew in their final preparations.

The girl leaned back against the deck railing and watched the bustle and work that went into preparing a ship to cast off. She did not wish to closet herself away in her cabin just yet, preferring the sting of the salt air on her face to the still and stale air behind the walls of her cabin and the purposeful activity of the crew to her own lonely and anguished thoughts. She did not wish to think on what Ternesio had revealed. She did not wish to sit on her bed and think of how Jaqen was the one meant to be sleeping in it. She did not wish to remember all the reasons why it was she who was headed west in place of her master.

The girl stared hard at the crew, at the horizon, at the mast with its bundled sail and at the birds flying overhead, forcing her eyes to drink in these images she preferred to the ones her mind wished to play for her; images of Jaqen's burning bronze eyes and his bowed head. She quietly observed the people moving around her and the distraction seemed adequate, but when she absently put her hand in the pocket of her breeches and began to rub the two iron coins together, all she could think of was her loss. The girl jerked her hand out of her pocket as if something in it had burned her. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly and grimaced. The Lyseni assassin saw her with that look upon her face and approached her carefully, taking a place next to her, leaning his back against the railing and crossing his arms over his broad chest, mimicking her posture. He stayed there, silent and still, for a long time before he spoke. As the ship navigated its way through the waters of the harbor and toward the Titan's back, the Bear broke their silence. He did not ask if the girl was alright, for he knew she was not.

"What can I do?" he begged, desperate to relieve her pain.

"You're doing it," she said, making an attempt at a smile.

The boy sighed and turned around, leaning over the railing and looking down at the green waves.

"Maybe you should rest," he suggested, and the advice sounded lame, even to his own ears. "Would you like me to carry your things to your cabin?"

"Thank you, brother, but I think I'll stay here for a while. But if you would... My things... I'm just not ready to go in yet."

"I'll take them," he said kindly, glad to be given something he might do for her, however small. Despite her assurances, he still felt guilty for not coming to her aid the previous night. He took her satchel and her wooden box and disappeared with them. A while later, he returned to her side and though she said nothing, she was grateful for his company. When they had passed beneath the Titan, the girl asked where the Rat had gotten off to.

"I left him in a hammock below deck," the Bear replied. "I think he's determined to sleep the entire journey away."

"That might be more pleasant for both of us," the Cat remarked.

"It might be at that. But perhaps..."

She looked at the Lyseni questioningly.

"Perhaps you should try to find a way..." he began.

"Brother, I have no idea what the root of that boy's rancor is. He has hated me since before I ever spoke to him. I don't know what I can do about that."

"Maybe ask him his reasons," the boy offered. Arya groaned.

"And after four years, you think he'll finally tell me?"

"Well, it won't hurt to try."

The girl heaved a great sigh as if she were being forced to comply with a most unreasonable request.

"Fine," she grumbled. "For you, I'll _try_."

"And for me, would you try _without_ a blade?"

She rolled her eyes at him but the Bear raised his eyebrows at her expectantly. He desired her promise.

"I won't poke him!" she growled, aggravated.

"Now, there's a good girl," the boy cooed, patting her indulgently on her head. "I think you've earned your gift now."

"My gift? What are you talking about?" the girl demanded, turning toward him.

"Don't you remember what today is, sister?" the Bear asked. When she narrowed her eyes and looked strangely at him, he continued, "Well, I haven't forgotten."

The boy pulled something from his pocket. It appeared to be soft, like cloth. He unfurled it and revealed a midnight blue headscarf, covered with tiny, embroidered cats rendered in silver thread. Arya's mouth opened slightly and she felt tears spring to her eyes. She swiped at them in irritation, hoping her brother wouldn't notice, but of course, he did. She scowled at the sympathetic expression he wore.

"The wind is stinging my eyes," the girl muttered unconvincingly as the Bear leaned forward and tied the scarf around her head.

"Now you look a proper pirate," he said admiringly, ignoring her ire. "I told you I would save it for you, didn't I? And what's more, I was right. The color suits you perfectly."

She tried to smile at him but found herself convulsing, her face pinching as she fought to control the tears that tried to fall then. Her brother looked fondly at her and folded her into his arms, pressing her into his chest.

"Sometimes you're permitted to cry, you know," he told her.

"It's all I've done all day!" she complained through her tears.

"After all that has happened, do you really wonder at it?"

She buried her face in his chest, sobbing.

"Happy nameday, Cat," the boy murmured.

* * *

Brother and sister stayed in place until after the sun had set that night, watching as it sank below the horizon and allowed shadows to creep across the deck until the darkness enveloped them completely. The spoke some but mostly, they stood or sat in companionable silence, keeping each other company and holding each other's despair at bay. When the last of the day's light had bled away and only a few lanterns were lit to allow them to safely navigate their way to their respective bunks, the girl addressed her friend.

"I don't deserve you."

He smiled at her and said, "Whether you do or don't is of no consequence. You have me."

"Never doubt how grateful I am for that."

"Your gratitude is not necessary," the Bear assured his sister.

"Whether it's necessary or not is of no consequence," she told him. "You have it."

He laughed, calling her a devilishly clever Cat and she punched his arm good naturedly as they walked toward her cabin. He was determined to see her safely to her bed, whether or not she was more than capable to taking on the entire crew single handedly. While blindfolded.

The girl opened the door to her cabin and saw that someone had been kind enough to leave a taper for her. She lit it in the way Jaqen had taught her and then she could see a trunk at the foot of her bed. She did not recall it being part of the furnishings during her previous trip on _Titan's Daughter._ Her face must have betrayed her curiosity.

"The order sent along some things they thought would make you more comfortable during the trip," the Lyseni explained before she could ask.

"The _order_?"

"Well... the principal elder," he admitted. "But don't throw them overboard! Just... be practical."

"What? I'm always practical!" she insisted and her brother smirked at her.

Her eyes traveled to the bed then and she saw a long, wooden case situated centrally atop the mattress. It seemed somehow familiar. She turned to her brother and arched one eyebrow. His smirk was gone and he appeared serious; perhaps even... apologetic?

"I wasn't the only one who remembered your nameday," he began hesitantly.

"Oh?"

"When... the Lorathi was told he was being sent on his mission, he knew he would miss your nameday. The night of the feast, he asked me to make sure you got this."

The girl's throat felt tight.

_A gift from Jaqen,_ she thought. _His last gift._

It was then that she recalled where she had seen the case before. _Jaqen had delivered it to Meerios Dinast, shortly after he returned from his time away in Westeros._ And apparently, he had retrieved it, too.

She was going to find out what it contained after all.

Arya squeezed her eyes shut tightly and drew in a few sharp breaths through her nose. She had too many _damnable feelings_ just then and was incapable of ruling them when they rushed at her all at once. It was just... _Jaqen,_ and everything that went along with her thoughts of him. The grief and despair, the fluttering of her heart, the newness of her lust and the wonder of it, the dreams ( _lovely girl_ ) and her love and her glittering forever running headlong into violence and death and finding its end before its right time ( _never never never_ ); all of it.

"It's okay, Cat, you don't have to see to it now. Let me put it away for you and we can figure it out later."

She loved her brother then for his _we_ but she told him that she was okay.

"No. I think I need to see it now," the girl said. "I think I'd like to."

"Alright," the boy agreed. "Would you like for me to stay?"

Arya thought about it for a moment, but then said, "No. That's not necessary. You should get some sleep." She knew her brother had not gotten much rest the night before, standing vigil over her as he did.

"Well, goodnight then, sister. If you have need of me..."

"Thank you, Bear," the girl said, sliding her arms around the boy's middle and pressing her cheek into his chest.

He hesitated and then she felt him wrap her in his arms.

"I'm sorry your nameday couldn't have been happier for you," he said. "Maybe the next one..."

"Yes, the next one," she agreed.

"Six and ten," the Lyseni murmured. "A woman grown. You'll be wanting to marry soon."

She rolled her eyes at him and he grinned.

The boy grabbed the Cat's face and pressed a quick kiss on each of her cheeks before he turned and left her alone in her cabin.

Arya stared at the box, thinking of how she had first seen it, trailing Jaqen as she had from _The Dragon's Daughter_ to the Meerios Dinast Armory; of how she had quizzed her master about what was in the box.

_No one does not need to know what is in the box,_ he had told her, but she was not _no one_ any longer. She was once again Arya Stark and he had intended for her to have the contents of the box all along. She took a deep breath and approached the bed, laying her palms against the top of the wooden case. After a moment, she threw open the hinged lid and expelled the breath she had been holding.

* * *

_**Trojans-**_ Atlas Genius (I know, I'm double dipping here, but it fits)

_**Strawberry-**_ Everclear (don't fall down now, you will never get up)

_**Coming Home, Part II**_ -Skylar Grey (I know my kingdom awaits)


	59. Chapter 59

_Oh, and all I taught her was..._

_everything_

* * *

_A man said he had no gift for_ no one. _However, there is a gift for Arya Stark._

She threw back the hinged lid of the long, wooden box and breathed out slowly, staring at the contents. By the shape of the box and by the fact that she had spied her master taking it with him when he visited the premier armorer in Braavos, she could have guessed that the case held some sort of weapon. What she could not have known was that this steel she saw before her now had existed in other forms (had lived other lives); had been wielded by the men of her line, both lords and kings, for hundreds years; men whose bones now lay in the cold crypts of which she so often dreamed, their restless spirits held at bay by the rusting iron blades placed across the laps of their stern and stony likenesses.

She could not have known that it had been wielded by other men, too, and more recently (other men, aye, and one very unique woman with eyes like sapphires).

She could not have known that this steel displayed before her had been called by other names and that those names were spoken by countless mouths with voices both familiar and foreign. Names spoken by both friend and foe.

 _Widow's Wail._ A name offered up in a misguided and obsequious quest for favor. A name accepted in arrogance and ignorance.

 _Oathkeeper_. A name chosen with a strong sense of determination and an even stronger sense of obligation; a name that mocked noble aspirations frustrated by distance and circumstance and chance.

 _Ice._ A name which called back to the Age of Heroes; a name which had always wrought from her a deep and abiding sense of purpose and pride; a quiet, reverential regard for legacy.

She could not know any of this, had no way of knowing that the steel was familiar and hers by rights, yet she did.

_She felt it._

Her kinship with the steel, _this steel_ , was more than just her singular ability to use it to separate bone and sinew. It was more than just the way she would move with it, could dance with it, would make it sing. It was more than how she could wield it and mark the flesh of men, pierce their hearts, and open them from neck to navel with a flick of her slender wrist. There was more; so much more to this.

She could not explain how she knew it, but she knew.

When she saw what was contained in the box, she finally understood her master's words to her. _There is a gift for Arya Stark._ The gift before her was one that would most assuredly be coveted by anyone, but it would only have _meaning_ for Arya Stark (a fact that would have been apparent to her even if Jaqen had not included his note explaining what it was that he had gifted her). There was something in the steel that pulled at her; something in the spells, perhaps; something in the magic woven into Valyrian steel as it was folded again and again; something mysterious and unexplainable that spoke to the heart of Arya Stark. The ancient steel of her house beckoned her. The call was as clear to her as her father's voice had been when she was but a child, the authority in his tone undeniable; low and clear and commanding. When her father spoke, no words were needed to win her obedience; it was given without question; without thought.

It was given because it was owed and that was the Stark way.

When she looked at the steel in the wooden case, she had that same feeling she had when her father spoke. She had the same sense of obligation; the same drive to obedience. It was that feeling that told her the truth of what it was that she was seeing.

_Ice._

She closed her eyes for a moment and listened with her heart; felt it in her bones. She knew the truth, even if her eyes told her this could not be the ancestral sword of the Stark family; even if logic said that it was impossible.

Shimmering in the candlelight, the grey ripples of the steel were like a song to her; like velvet, rich and dark and fine; like the waves of the sea, rolling and relentless, carrying her home. She saw the blades, sharp enough to cleave a man in two as easily as they could part the air before her. There was a long, wide blade, and a slim one, and several small, wicked throwing knives—half a score—and she knew that together, all of the sharp edges and rippled flats somehow equaled Ice. As her eyes took in the dark, swirling lines in the blades, it was as if she could read the truth in them, and they told her that it must be so.

Her heart told her more. It told her that she stood in the presence of her father, the last great lord of Winterfell; in the presence of her ancestors, men who had been kings in the North, ruling all of the lands above the Neck; in the presence of Nymeria, a direwolf carried by fate and fortune (some would say by the will of the old gods) south of the Wall to command the greatest pack of predatory beasts ever seen in Westeros; in the presence of all the wild, frozen North; in the presence of all of them together.

Her heart told her this, and it told her that _winter is coming._

Arya sighed, willing her chaotic heartbeat to slow. Her eyes drifted to a note tucked into the box, held in place by the bastard blade.

She could not recall ever having seen anything written by Jaqen, but as she picked up the crisp parchment, she knew instantly that the note was from him. The hand was undoubtedly his, reflecting him exactly. The strokes were slender, elegant, precise, and _perfect._ He had written to her in the common tongue. Her lip trembled slightly.

 _Lovely girl,_ the note began and though she read it silently, it was as if she could hear Jaqen next to her, addressing her in his way. She was immediately overcome, dragging in a ragged breath and fighting for control of her emotions. Her heartbreak was too fresh and too awful and there was simply too much of it for her to rule. A sob clawed its way up her throat unannounced, insistent and painful. The note fell from her fingers and drifted to the floor as she clamped her hands over her mouth, stifling the sounds that fought to burst forth. It would not do for her brothers or the crew to come rushing in to investigate her sudden wailing. She did not wish to see anyone just now. She did not want to explain herself to anyone. She could not share this.

Not yet.

Arya stood for a long time in that way, one hand pressed against her mouth, the other hovering over the gift, wanting to touch the blades but afraid to at the same time; as if she might reach for them and find that they weren't real; as if her touch would cause the dark steel to dissolve into mist and leave her with no token of her master or her father. It wasn't until she saw three droplets strike the wider of the two blades that she even realized she was crying. She turned her face up toward the ceiling, using the backs of her hands to scrub the offensive tears from her face. Jaqen would not have liked to think of her crying and her father would have expected her to be strong.

 _Tears are no sort of revenge,_ she told herself, _and revenge is all I have left to strive for._

She drew a great breathe in and then let it escape her in a slow, steady stream. Setting her mouth in a firm line, she bent over and retrieved the note from her cabin floor.

_Lovely girl, a man is most sorry to miss your nameday._

She closed her eyes tightly for a moment before opening them and reading further.

_He hopes you will forgive his absence and that you will trust that only the direst of threats could have convinced him to leave you. A man hopes that in completing this mission, he will fulfill the will of Him of Many Faces and make his lovely girl safe at the same time._

She did not understand what he meant by that. Was his final mission, the one he was not able to complete, or even allowed to begin, somehow to do with her?

 _These blades were created from your father's own sword. His enemies had the blade of your house melted down and used it to create two separate weapons which a man recovered while traveling across Westeros. This steel was originally intended to be reforged as one greatsword, an exact copy of the blade known as_ Ice, _but a man knew that such a weapon would be of no use to you as anything more than a relic to be displayed._

The hand holding Jaqen's note dropped to her side for a moment, shaking a little. The steel had been meant to be used to recreate Ice, yet here before her were blades like the ones she had been training with since Jaqen had returned from Westeros.

 _Well, not exactly like the ones he made me train with,_ she thought. _These are obviously infinitely superior to training blades._

Her master had told Meerios Dinast to create these blades for her within a few days of his return to Braavos, apparently in defiance of some plan to use the steel to reforge Ice in its original form.

 _Whose plan?_ she wondered.

 _Don't be so thick,_ her little voice chided. _Who do you think?_

Her expression was grim as she thought of the principal elder.

_But why would he want to reforge Ice? What is it to him?_

Finding no immediate answer, she lifted the note once again and resumed reading.

_A man knows, however, that a lovely girl has far more use for good steel as a weapon than as a remembrance . He hopes you will understand his choice commissioning these blades rather than a greatsword and that you will finally understand his insistence that you master a dual sword technique with a water dancer's blade as well as a bastard sword._

Without reading the rest of it, the girl carefully set her master's note on the bed and looked again at the weapons in the box. She had, of course, seen greatswords and longswords made with Valyrian steel (though not many, as large weapons made from the stuff were exceedingly rare, even among the great families of her homeland), and she had seen her share of daggers created from it as well, but she had never seen a Valyrian steel _Bravos_ blade. She marveled at it, finally allowing her fingers to contact the steel. It was cool and smooth and she felt something as she touched it. Something like strength; something like purpose.

Something like... memory.

A remembrance of her father, as he was when she was a nine year old girl in soiled skirts and muddy slippers; her father holding Ice, imparting a lesson to her brothers, not knowing that she hid in the shadows, listening too; learning his lessons as well as any son could. _The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword._ The words of her father, instructing his children in the old ways; the ways of the First Men. And there was a remembrance of her father as he was in her dreams of the crypts of Winterfell, too; stern and resolute and exacting. Voicing his expectations of her; that _she_ adhere to the old ways; that _she_ use her wits and compassion to make hard choices and shoulder the responsibility for the outcome of those choices.

That she return home and do her duty as the heir to Winterfell; as the hope of the North.

(She did not truly understand her father's insistence regarding her importance; she could not see how the North could possibly need her, but Lord Stark's words nagged at her and she heard them so often in her head these days that she began to believe the truth of them, even if she could not understand the why of it all.)

Arya thought briefly, too, of Syrio Forel. The First Sword of Braavos had offered her wisdom at every turn, and those words had carried her through some of the most trying times in her life. _Fear cuts deeper than swords. Calm as still water. Every hurt is a lesson._

There was a remembrance of Jaqen as well. Her master, teaching her. Her beloved, holding her. Those memories hurt; those memories tore at the heart of her, his loss still too raw for her to look at them with any objectivity. _You have all the instinct in the world. You must feel it in your gut. A girl must be ready._ Jaqen, with bronze eyes that burned and urgent lips that spoke and kissed and calloused fingers that instructed and caressed and kneaded her flesh. Jaqen, with his sense of honor and dedication to duty; with all his belief and service and sacrifice, availing nothing. Jaqen, her love, her breath, the entirety of her happiness, lost to the capricious dictates of inscrutable men.

And then there was Jon.

It all came back to her in a rush. Jon's face might have grown hazy after so long, or even been forgotten. Such a thing would have been understandable. It had been nearly seven years since she had last seen him after all, and Arya was just a young girl then, with no thought that she should try to memorize her brother's features. She had since learned that faces, the look of them at least, meant little and less when they could be discarded in an instant, replaced with something that might better serve in the moment. But his face was her face and his eyes were her eyes and so she could not forget; could not help but to recall him exactly. His words were committed to her memory as well, as if they had been made of metal heated by dragon flame, molten things poured into her head where they cooled and hardened and became a part of her, filling the inside of her skull. Jon had given her a blade, her _first_ blade, and said this weapon was no toy, his face stern like their father's, dark brows knitted with his seriousness and intensity. He had said she should stick them with the pointy end, and he had laughed lightly then, his face instantly transformed, becoming young again and full of his quiet joy. He had suggested that her sword needed a name.

_All the best swords have names._

She stared at the blades for a long while, watching the strange shimmer of the spelled steel in the candlelight. The larger blade dwarfed the slender _Bravos_ sword, but still, even it seemed petite when she thought of Ice. She stared at it, this bastard blade born of the ancestral greatsword of her family, and it was as if she could hear her father's voice then.

_You are my grey daughter. You are the hope of the North._

_You are my grey daughter. Come home._

_You are my grey daughter and my winter child. You belong to the North._

_You are my grey daughter. The North has need. The time is now and you must come._

And so she was finally obeying, sailing home, though it had not been her choice to do so. But fate has a way of conspiring to fulfill its own will. Fate has a way of recruiting those whose service it requires, despite their protestations. Fate has a way of devouring its chosen within its iron jaws.

Her dreams of the icy crypts of Winterfell flooded her memory; her father's shade speaking to her from atop his own tomb, reminding her of her duty; of her obligation; imploring her to accept her destiny and return to the land of her youth. Gowns of frost and blood filled her mind. She thought of direwolves and marble girls crowned with roses rendered in hard stone; she thought of legacy and long-whispered prayers and the inevitable capitulation to expectation (at least to those expectations particular to her father). She thought of family. She thought of home.

Arya looked at all the blades that together equaled Ice and thought of her family's ancestral sword. It was impossible to separate her memories of the blade from her memories of the man who had carried it. When she thought of the Valyrian steel greatsword, she could not help but to think of Eddard Stark. She could never picture Ice but that her father was there, holding it. Her father wielded Ice as if it were a part of him; as if it _was_ him. And likewise, she could not think of herself without thinking that she was the child of Eddard Stark; as if _she_ was a part of him.

She was Arya Stark, and she was his grey daughter. A small piece of her father lived on within her.

She reached out her hand and took the bastard blade from the case, expecting a certain heft; prepared for a weight. It always surprised her, the lightness of Valyrian steel. It threw her off balance for a moment, but she quickly recovered, holding the sword out straight in front of her; in her eye line, her gaze moving along the blade, appraising it. The steel was smoky perfection, gleaming darkly as the flickering candlelight danced along the flat of it while she twisted her wrist back and forth, turning the sword over and back again.

_All the best swords have names._

"Grey Daughter," she whispered, and it felt right, in her bones. It felt... _fated._

She replaced the sword in its case, pressing it into the molded velvet that fit its shape perfectly. She turned her attention to the slender water dancer's blade next to Grey Daughter. It was a beautiful thing to behold; so beautiful that it nearly defied description. She picked it up by its ornate hilt and carefully flicked her wrist, slicing through the air before her, mindful to avoid the hangings on her cabin wall. It would have been nothing to reduce them to ribbons, and she did not think Ternesio Terys would thank her for it.

Before opening the case, she would have insisted that Needle had no equal; that no sword could be as beautiful to her as was the prize given to her by her favorite brother. Needle was precious to her, its worth beyond all measure, and ever would be for reasons beyond its excellent edge and fine balance. As she studied her new _Bravos_ blade, however, she began to realize why Jaqen had felt she would have need of it. During her four years in Braavos, she had grown but Needle had not. The Valyrian steel _Bravos_ blade had the appropriate length and weight for a woman. Though still deadly when wielded properly, Needle had been made for a child. It was no toy, aye, but it was not a thing for war, either.

Grey Daughter was a heavier blade and remarkable, honed as it was from Ice; a bastard sword, sharp as sin and spectacular to behold with its blade of rippling, shaded silver. But this Valyrian steel water dancer's blade was likely the only one of its kind, long and slim, wicked, menacing, glinting as it waited to open a throat or puncture a heart. The reach was incredible, better than Needle's by far and even better than her recent slender training blades. It was perhaps a tad longer than she might have thought it should be for a sword of its type, but then, she supposed she might still grow some. She had flowered late, and waif had said that could make a girl grow taller than expected. She was small compared to some, but for all that, she was still like to gain a bit of height.

Arya slashed at the air once again, marveling at the lightness of the blade, this fragment of her father's greatsword.

 _Such a tiny thing, compared to Ice,_ she marveled silently. _Such delicate lines. Elegant._

 _But no less deadly, in its way,_ her little voice observed. _There will be nothing delicate about its bite. This is a thing to turn a man into a cold corpse, fit only for those wintery crypts that you so often wander in your dreams._

She shivered, thinking of her recurring dream; remembering the creeping ice that froze her in place; almost feeling the cold tendrils of frost creeping up her neck and over her cheeks. The frost was not as cumbersome as the ice, she thought, but its kiss was just as painful and in time, it could be just as deadly.

 _Frost,_ she decided suddenly as she studied the beautifully ornate guard and pommel of her slim sword.

And so her swords were named. She smiled slightly, thinking of Syrio, of Jon, of Jaqen, of her father; all the men in her life who had shaped her, whose approval had she sought, whose love she cherished; all of the men who had put steel in her hand as if they believed that it belonged there and urged to her use it properly without judging her to be defective for her love of it or too coarse and uncouth to warrant their time and affection. She replaced Frost in the case and closed the lid, removing the wooden box from her mattress and sliding it beneath the bed. She drifted down to the mattress then, retrieving Jaqen's note and steeling herself to finish it.

She skimmed down the page and then found the place where she had left off.

_Continue to train, lovely girl, so that you may always be the most fearsome creature in the room. Do you duty, whatever is asked. In this way, the order can have no quarrel with you and you will be safe until a man returns for you._

She bit her lip and looked off in the distance, concentrating on breathing evenly until the piercing pain in her chest eased. She swallowed down the lump that had formed in her throat and sniffed hard a few times.

 _Don't cry, stupid,_ she chastised herself, _or the ink will run off the parchment and you'll ruin the letter._ She so badly wished to save the note. After a moment, she returned her attention to the parchment, desperate to read the last words of her master to her.

 _Remember a man's vow to you_ , the note continued.

Her eyes settled on her feet and then her memory carried her back to her cell beneath the temple. She was wearing only Jaqen's blouse, cradled in his arms.

 _A man will come back to you. A man will find you, no matter where you may have wandered,_ her master had vowed to her before he left her for the last time. She had nodded, accepting his promise, and he had kissed her.

 _If I had known_ , she thought bitterly, _I would never have let him leave._

 _You could not have stopped him,_ her little voice countered. _He thought he was protecting you somehow._

The guilt of it was crushing her.

Her eyes flicked to the parchment again.

_Do not grieve in a man's absence. A man would have you be happy, always. Trust in Him of Many Faces. He has always answered a man's most fervent prayers. That is how a man knows he will see his lovely girl again, and soon. He has prayed for this most ardently. We will be together again, sweet girl. It is our fate._

He had signed his note with a simple _J._

There was a small table adjacent to her bed and in it, a drawer. She slid the note into the drawer and managed to close it before she gave in, allowing the sobs to wrack her body as she collapsed onto her mattress.

* * *

It was much later that Arya finally gave up trying to sleep, after her tears were all spent and she stared up at the ceiling above her bed. She was exhausted but the relentless way her mind spun in a thousand different directions denied her the rest she sought. So she rose from her bed and slipped Needle into her belt, intending to take a walk on the deck, hoping that perhaps the small exercise could provide a distraction from her tortured thoughts. She did not slip on the boots she had removed earlier, hoping the trick would help her remain undetected in the dark and that she would consequently be left alone by any wandering crewmen.

_Clever girls go barefoot._

Her master's words to her in the baths at Harrenhal returned to her unbidden. She froze, not knowing whether to embrace the sudden memories of Jaqen that popped into her head or whether to run from them. Although they always brought with them a searing pain that nearly robbed her of her breath, her memories were all she had left.

 _Memories and a lone letter,_ she thought, then amended, _and an iron coin._

She stepped out of her cabin and was surprised to note how chilly the night air was against her skin. Arya wondered if perhaps she should have tugged on her boots after all, but then, the cold had never bothered her much, and so she continued, walking alongside the deck railing, listening to the sound of the ship cutting through the waters. The sea was calmer than she had thought it would be but she supposed all that would change soon enough. There might be times when it was too dangerous for her to walk about the deck; there might be too much risk of being washed overboard in rough, stormy seas, so for now, she enjoyed the freedom to stroll and count the stars.

As she moved aftward, she heard a strange noise. It took her a moment to place the sound, but as she drew nearer, she realized someone was leaning over the ship's rail, heaving. She knew it was not likely to be one of the sailors and there were no other passengers on the galleass save herself and her brothers, so she almost laughed good naturedly, thinking it must be the Bear. She quickened her pace, moving toward the man in distress silently on her bare feet. When she was close enough to see the figure in the light cast by the nearby lantern, she drew up short. It was the Rat, not the Bear, who pulled back from the rail, straightening himself and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

All of her warm feelings and goodwill fled and she felt a scowl forming on her face. When the Rat finally caught sight of her, his expression mirrored hers.

"Why are you sneaking around?" he demanded by way of greeting.

"Why are _you_ out of your bunk?" she shot back sourly.

"Why are _you_?"

They stared at each other in the feeble light from the lantern, neither answering the other.

"It's going to be a long trip," the Cat finally said, "and the seas will get rougher."

"So?"

"So, if you keep getting sick like this, you'll grow weak. Men can die if they can't keep enough water down, stupid."

"What do you propose I do about it then?" he snapped as he eyed her suspiciously, not trusting that her concern was genuine.

She shrugged as she replied, "Chew some ginger root. It helps. The cook should have some."

He frowned, muttering, "I never wanted this mission anyway." The way he looked at her then made it clear that he blamed her for his disturbed stomach.

"Neither did I," she whispered, thinking of all that had transpired to bring her to this place. Her brother began sneering at her then.

"You don't have a mission," he spat. "You've been _exiled_. You don't have anything to do but let your betters carry you back to your castle and your riches and your fine society."

Her face pinched and she glared at him.

"For all I know, Winterfell is a burned out husk and I have neither riches nor friends left in Westeros, so you can damn well shut your mouth about things you don't understand, _brother_."

"Don't call me that!" the Rat barked. "I'm not your brother. _I_ took vows, not you! _You_ failed! The great _Cat_ couldn't slit one measly throat to earn her face!" He laughed cruelly then.

What little control she had snapped and she flew at him, knocking him into the rail. The momentum bent them both precariously over the water.

"Get off!" the thin boy screeched in alarm, his laughter having died. She ignored him, ignored the danger, and grunted as she jammed her forearm into his throat, forcing his head further down.

"You're such a talented assassin," the girl hissed sarcastically. "You had no trouble killing that old man. Tell me, how much of a challenge does an elderly mummer present to a Faceless Man?"

He met her hard glare and his hatred seemed to bleed the fear from him.

"Probably as much of a challenge as a bound, kneeling, broken Lorathi does," he retorted hoarsely.

Her scream was guttural and she grabbed at her hip, yanking at Needle's hilt. Before she could slice the Rat's throat, though, she felt large hands grip her arms and jerk her backwards with force, pulling her off of her foe.

"Cat!" the Bear yelled. "What are you doing?"

"Settling a score!" she yelled back, struggling against her brother's hold on her. He hauled her back further, pressing her against him, wrapping his arms around her so that she could not lunge again. He lifted her up so that she could not get any traction to throw him. She twisted in his arms and kicked uselessly, her bare feet six inches off the ground.

"Stop it," the Lyseni said softly against the top of her head. His voice was soothing but it took a few moments for her rage to cool.

The rat-faced boy had righted himself and stepped away from the rail.

"You're lucky your guard arrived," he told Arya. "In another minute, I would have tossed you overboard."

The girl laughed at him.

"How would you have done that?" she wondered, her voice full of venom. "You would have been too busy bleeding all over Captain Terys' deck after I poked you full of holes!"

The seething boy made a move toward her but the Bear turned her protectively away and gave his brother a warning look that stopped the Rat in his tracks.

"Enough," the large assassin said with a quiet authority that Arya was sure she had never heard in his voice before. "Both of you. Enough."

The girl relaxed slightly in her brother's arms and his grip on her loosened just a tad. He allowed her feet to touch the ground once again. She couldn't resist goading the rat-faced boy just a little more though.

"It's alright, brother," the Cat said, addressing the man who detained her. "This terrifying assassin was just regaling me with tales of his skill. It seems he was given the difficult task of delivering the gift to an old, feeble man in order to earn his face. I was just wondering what sort of threat he had to face in order to complete his final trial."

She turned her attention to the Rat then, looking at him with cold expectancy. She did not like the malicious grin that curved the boy's thin lips at her scrutiny. Her eyes narrowed as he shrugged.

"Cat..." the Bear warned, tightening his grasp around her once again. She ignored him.

"Well?" she prodded from the cage of her brother's arms. "Oh, come now, brother Rat! Tell us! Who did you have to kill before you could take your vows? Was it a suckling babe? A crippled beggar? Or perhaps a grandmother on her death bed?"

"Kill?" he laughed, and the sound had no cheer to it, only a sort of creeping, dark satisfaction. "I didn't have to kill anyone for my final trial."

"Well, that hardly seems fair," the girl scoffed. "What did you have to do then? Clean Umma's kitchen? Teach little Loric how to smile less and skulk and sneer more?"

The boy smirked at Arya and the look on his face gave his brother pause. There was something in the Rat's expression that filled the Bear with dread.

"Brother," the Lyseni cautioned in a low voice, "stop."

But the Rat did not stop.

"It was so simple, really," the Westerosi assassin remarked, his tone making him sound both condescending and bored, but the Bear could see the sinister gleam in his brother's eyes. "All I had to do was convince a stupid, highborn bitch that I was Jaqen H'ghar."

The girl frowned, her brows knitting themselves together with the threads of her confusion. She looked at the skinny assassin, her gaze crawling up his chest, his neck, his face, and settling on his eyes.

His _eyes._

The eyes, that most difficult part of a false face to master. They took so much concentration to change and maintain. Even practiced masters often left them, to spare themselves the strain.

_His eyes had been wrong. Dark, dull, not the burning bronze that had so often brought a blush to a lovely girl's cheek; not the knowing, intelligent eyes that woke the birds in her chest and the snakes in her belly. At the time, she had assumed that their appearance had been altered by abuse or poison or possibly some small bit of dark magic from Asshai' but now..._

She squinted in the low lantern light, staring into the dark, emotionless eyes of her Westerosi brother, so devoid of warmth and joy and love. Devoid of all the things that made Jaqen _Jaqen._ A realization began to bloom within her. She had a fleeting recollection of strolling along the docks of Ragman's with her master. She wore her own face but kept it covered with a wispy veil and he wore the face of a weathered Pentoshi ship's captain. He was training her, teaching her to pick out false faces. She was meant to discover the Faceless masters and acolytes who roamed the area among the crowd.

_What was it he had said then? Oh, yes..._

_If you cannot tell a man's real face from his false, you will never be ready. And a girl must be ready._

_How did I not see it? What a fool I am! What a stupid fool!_ she thought frantically as she gave an involuntary cry, hardly daring to allow herself to feel the belief, the _hope_ that began to bubble up inside of her then.

"He's alive? He's still alive?" she asked breathlessly, straining against the Bear's arms, trying to move closer to the Rat so she could read the truth in his face.

The Rat shrugged casually, his expression of disinterest infuriating her. She kicked at her large brother's shin but her bare feet did not disturb the Lyseni enough to inspire him to release her from his firm hold.

"I don't know what became of him. He could be at the bottom of the canal by now, half eaten by eels," the rat-faced boy replied, his mouth twisting a bit as he spoke, as if this was all a splendid amusement for him. "All I know is that you gave up your place in the order for nothing. You thought you were saving him, _but you were really saving me_."

* * *

The Lorathi assassin sat ruminating in the council chamber. The door was bolted from the outside and he knew that two of his brothers stood guard on the other side of it to prevent his leaving. They were right to do so. Had the door been left unguarded, he would have smashed it to bits with his bare hands if that was what was required to gain his freedom and find his lovely girl. The elders must have understand that he would have torn the temple apart, torn the whole of _Braavos_ apart if need be, until he discovered her. Thus far, he had been kept ignorant of Arya's fate, likely another precaution to prevent undue violence and interference with the order's larger plans. Had Jaqen known that she was boarding a ship bound for Westeros just then, neither man nor beast could have prevented his flying to the harbor to stop her. He would have done whatever was necessary to keep her with him; to prevent her return to that barbaric land from which she had only narrowly escaped; to keep her safe from all the cold things and crippling memories and danger that the war-torn country held for the daughter of Eddard Stark.

Jaqen wasn't entirely sure how long he had been detained in the council chamber, but he knew it had been well over a day. His sister had taken pity on him and brought him some bread and wine twice during his confinement, but the last time seemed ages ago and now he felt a gnawing in his belly that told him he had missed more than one meal.

Aside from his sister and the glimpses of his brothers that he got as the tiny master entered and exited the chamber, the only other person he had seen since it became obvious that he was being denied freedom of movement was the principal elder. After their initial meeting in the chamber (and the elder forbidding him to leave, his obedience of such an order guaranteed by the spelled bolt _and_ the Faceless Men on the other side of the door), the Lorathi's master had returned one more time, just before the Cat was meant to perform the task that would earn her a face.

_"The time is upon us, brother," the elder with the kindly face had said to his former apprentice. "When you and I are done here, I will send the Lyseni boy to fetch her and she will be given her chance."_

_When the principal elder mentioned that he was sending the large acolyte after his sister, Jaqen thought perhaps it would be this boy that she would be directed to kill. It would be an awful sacrifice, for both his lovely girl (who had formed an undeniable and annoyingly strong attachment to the lad) and for the order which had spent years training the boy, but the magic resulting from such a sacrifice would be powerful indeed. Besides that, it was no secret (in council chambers, at least) that the boy's loyalties had become suspect after he had delivered the gift to the tavern wench who was his lover. Jaqen had warned the council of the likelihood of just that outcome should they require such an action of the boy, but the serving girl had to be dealt with and tasking the Lyseni with the mission was a matter of expediency and convenience. The necessary deed was done and the boy had earned his face in the process but the Bear had not adjusted well, despite the assurances of the principal elder and the stern-faced master that he would. As a consequence, the boy had become rather a problem. Jaqen's tiny sister had informed the council of the Lyseni's attempt to convince the Cat to flee the temple with him (Jaqen had been secretly pleased and somewhat relieved that his lovely girl had chosen to stay. Since she had first passed through the ebony and weirwood doors, he had been bracing himself for the day that she would quit the temple altogether, disappearing into the night to pursue her wolf dreams and her bloody vendetta). The defection of a disgruntled acolyte was trouble enough, and would have been handled swiftly and without mercy had the plan actually proceeded, but the Lyseni's attempt to sway his sister to join him in his treason had been regarded with extreme displeasure by the Kindly Man despite the girl's determination to remain steadfast in her course._

_The bronze-eyed assassin recalled how his sister had once told him that Arya was favored most of all the acolytes by the principal elder. The older man's ire when the Bear's half-formed plot was discussed lent credence to her assertion._

_Jaqen thought on his master's words then; his declaration that the girl would be given her chance._

_"A chance to choose between love and duty," the Lorathi remarked, studying the false face of the Kindly Man as he spoke. "A man wonders in what form his master plans to offer such a choice to a girl."_

_He was not sure if the elder would make him an answer, but the older man seemed little enough concerned with revealing the nature of the girl's task now that her master found himself confined, with no way to see her or further influence her before her somber and pivotal undertaking._

_"It seems to me that the girl loves one above all others in this temple," the elder replied, looking at the Lorathi with his unnerving eyes. Jaqen tilted his head slightly, his face impassive. Understanding came to him quickly but his features betrayed no fear._

_"A girl will not do a thing simply because the principal elder wishes her to," the younger assassin cautioned. His master merely smiled and the gesture seemed a little sad, but the Lorathi knew he could not trust the look. The feeling might be genuine or it might be as false as the piercing blue of his eyes._

_"Did I not warn you, brother? Did I not caution you against the sin of becoming?"_

_The younger assassin said nothing and so his master continued._

_"Is there any greater affront to Him of Many Faces than love?"_

_"A man does not recall anything in the ancient teachings which strictly forbids it," the Lorathi finally answered._

_"But how can you claim dedication to your duty, to your god, if you spend your cares in this manner?" the elder retorted gently. "No, brother. This was a grievous sin, and for this offense,_ Jaqen H'ghar _must die."_

_The irony of the moment was not lost on the assassin. For all of his worry for his lovely girl, for all of his long-standing concern that she would suffer some unbearable consequence of her disobedience and her failure to conform in the ways their order demanded of her, for all of his fear that she would be punished by the principal elder, it was he who had been judged in the end. Judged and sentenced. It seemed that a verdict had been reached. He was guilty and would pay the ultimate price, for the consequence of his hubris was death._

_The consequence of hers was to be the one who delivered that gift._

_"She will never do it," the young master said quietly._

_"Then perhaps you should have instructed her more thoroughly in the ways of obedience," the elder suggested. "As you well know, failure in this task is not allowed. The alternative to earning your face is rather... unpleasant."_

_A sort of fear gripped Jaqen's heart then. It was the only sort of fear he ever felt anymore; fear for_ her. _Fear of_ losing _her._

_He saw clearly the trap that had been set for his lovely girl. This was not strictly a choice between love and duty. It was a choice between his life and hers. Could she be selfish enough to sacrifice him in order to save herself? His heart sank at the thought. He hoped that she would but feared that she could not. Would she understand that it was no choice at all? That even if she managed to save him, she would really be sacrificing them both?_

_"Why appoint a task that you know she will fail?" the Lorathi demanded of the elder then._

_The Kindly Man's mouth twitched slightly._

_"Have faith, brother," the older man said. "There may yet be hope for the girl, and for us all."_

The principal elder had left the council chamber rather abruptly after that interaction, pleading duty but pledging to return at his earliest opportunity. The Lorathi did not know at the time whether his master truly meant to sacrifice him or if his contention that it must be so was part of some game. As time dragged on without the Kindly Man's reappearance, however, Jaqen began to suspect that there was something more insidious at work; some larger plan, and one that was most assuredly not a game. Still, he could not rule out that his former master meant to deliver the gift to him, especially if he was perceived as a threat to whatever it was that the elder was trying to accomplish; whatever plot it was that revolved around Arya Stark.

 _Arya Stark,_ the assassin began to pray, but he stopped, not knowing what to pray for this time. Finally, he closed his eyes, thinking, _Keep her safe._ If he was truly doomed, he could only hope that she would somehow be spared.

Jaqen was not afraid to die. He and death were old friends and had been such constant companions, side by side for so long, that the idea of it no longer held any mystery or terror for him. Still, when he considered the notion, he felt a sadness overtake him. He knew that if he must go, he would miss his lovely girl. He wished then that he could see her one last time, if only to say goodbye. _To touch her fair cheek and kiss her goodbye._

 _Death will not part us,_ he had said to his beloved not two days prior. He had given her his promise, and she had believed him.

 _How foolish,_ he thought, silently berating himself, _and how inexcusably arrogant._

The assassin sighed.

No, Jaqen did not fear death. But he would be most aggrieved to leave his lovely girl behind.

_So very, very aggrieved._

* * *

Jaqen dozed for a time, the fatigue finally overtaking him. He alternately rested his head against the back of his chair and on the table before him. When he once again awoke, he gauged his hunger and thought that maybe he had not eaten for a whole day. He had seen his master several hours after his sister had last brought him food but had seen no one since then. There was a pervasive stillness about the place and it worried him. His lovely girl would have faced her task already, and would have been declared either a success or a failure. If successful, she had already taken her vows and could change her face at will. If not... he did not like to think of what would have become of her. He was cheered by the fact that he had not been fetched from the chamber to face Arya's blade. It was possible he had misinterpreted his master's meaning when the elder had said that the girl would be given a choice and that Jaqen H'ghar must die. It was very puzzling, though. If not him, then had it been the Bear after all? Or perhaps that little pot boy she seemed to fawn over? Someone's blood would have been spilled, either in sacrifice or in retribution for defiance.

 _She would not have harmed either of them,_ he thought. _Not willingly._ He tried not to think of what that would mean for her. He stood up then to stretch. He had become rather stiff after falling asleep in his seated position. Overtired and hungry, the assassin judged that it must have been well past mid-day when the council chamber door finally creaked open once again. He turned to watch as the principal elder strode through the door. Despite the Lorathi's nearly legendary mastery of his face, he startled at what he saw and then slowly sank back down into his chair.

It was his master, aye, but he no longer wore the face that a lovely girl had always thought so _kindly._ Instead, the elder had donned the face that Jaqen loved best; the face of the man who had first greeted an orphaned Lorathi boy who had found himself alone and frightened in the large, shadowy main temple chamber so many years ago. Gone were the familiar hallmarks of the Kindly Man; the soft, snowy hair and piercing blue eyes with surrounding crow's feet that hinted at years of laughter. After nearly four years, they had been replaced by the features that made up the Braavosi countenance of the master who had trained Jaqen for all the time before he _was_ Jaqen; the man who had substituted for his father and his mother and who had been his first friend. Though the principal elder had looked the part of a _Kindly Man_ for all of the years that Arya was training in the temple, _this_ face, so familiar to the Lorathi assassin, was the one that he always pictured in his head whenever he thought of his master. The elder was a small man, and dark, but imposing nonetheless, with movements that reflected both his considerable strength and his matchless grace.

The younger man supposed that there was some sense in the change. If his master intended to mete out the ultimate punishment for alleged heresy, then he was not likely to do so while wearing his kindliest face.

"Has the principal elder worn his first face so that it will seem kinder or more cruel when he kills a man?" Jaqen inquired nonchalantly. Inside, he felt a burgeoning sorrow.

"Kill you?" the elder repeated in a confused tone, his dark eyes seeming to almost sparkle with merriment. "Why would I kill you when you have done exactly as I expected, and exactly as I desired?"

The Lorathi tilted his head fractionally, awaiting further explanation. He knew it would come if he was patient.

"Well, perhaps not _exactly_ as I desired," the elder amended, taking his customary seat at the head of the table and watching his former apprentice from under his heavy, dark eyebrows. "You were _meant_ to have the blade reforged in the exact image of her father's sword."

The Cat's master raised his eyebrows at that.

"What interest does the order have in what becomes of the heirlooms of noble Westerosi houses?" he asked the elder.

"My boy, it was meant to be a powerful symbol."

"It would not have been practical for a girl to wield," Jaqen argued.

"She was not meant to wield it!" the principal elder snapped in a rare show of pique. "She was meant to demonstrate her legitimacy with it."

Briefly, Jaqen recalled the ghost of High Heart and the exchange he had with her amidst the great ring of weirwood stumps.

_"You know what a man seeks."_

_"Yes, and I know why you seek it, although I do not think_ you _know why you seek it."_

"Swords are not symbols," the Lorathi said. "They are weapons. There was a time when Tyto Arturis remembered that."

The older man raised his heavy eyebrows at the assassin's use of his name.

"Sometimes, they are both," the elder sighed. He stared hard at the Lorathi for a few moments and then said evenly, "Brother, there is much you do not yet understand."

"There is much you have kept from me, brother," the Lorathi countered, matching his master's tone perfectly.

"You have made it difficult," Tyto chastised. "When I thought to reveal our plans to you, you were already half in love with her."

The explanation was given in a matter-of-fact manner. Jaqen could detect no judgment in his master's tone, which surprised him.

"Half in love?" younger assassin mused, his small smile seeming more mournful than cheery. "If there is such a state, a man has never seen it."

His meaning was clear. The girl owned his heart, wholly and completely.

"Just so," the principal elder responded, perhaps a little doleful himself.

The two regarded each other for a moment before the Lorathi spoke again.

"Have you news for a man?" he asked the principal elder, hoping to hear that his lovely girl had done what was asked of her and successfully completed her trial. His master nodded, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he began to speak.

"Your beautiful apprentice failed at her task rather spectacularly. Still, you should have seen her. She was magnificent," the elder remarked, and there was a note of pride in his voice which seemed genuine. "She fought hard for you, brother, and she even dared to challenge me. That was all for your sake."

Jaqen could tell by the elder's voice and his expression that the last bit was meant to chasten him, but he did not understand what his master meant by _she fought hard for you_ and at the thought of his lovely girl attempting to fight Tyto Arturis, the assassin's heart clenched. Even after all these years, he believed that Tyto's skill with a blade could not be matched. His throat felt very dry and so he swallowed subtly before he spoke again.

"You did not harm the girl," Jaqen stated quietly, looking up at his master with his brow drawing together, creating a deep wrinkle above his nose. It was not a question, but still, he sought confirmation. He made that much evident with his hard stare. When elder did not answer immediately, his former apprentice began to rise from his seat, meaning to force a reply.

" _Sit down!_ " the principal elder barked. The Lorathi froze in place and his master's voice softened then. "Of course I did not harm her." The older man took on a faraway look, and as Jaqen settled back into his chair, the elder resumed his reply, as if musing to himself. "Such a natural. If only I'd had longer than those few meager months to train her... still, her skill is impressive."

There was something that niggled in the back of Jaqen's mind; something that made him feel uneasy. There was an idea fighting to form, but even at its soft edges, he did not like the look of it, and so sought to find another explanation for his master's words.

"You have had _four years_ to train the girl after her arrival at the temple."

"Yes, but I was not speaking of the Faceless arts, my boy. I meant her dancing lessons, of course."

The feeling of unease intensified and the Lorathi fought to push it back down. _He surely does not mean... No._

"A man believed that you had given up the training of acolytes with your sword. A man believed that your time was too precious since your ascendance in the order; that you could not afford to spend it in the training room with recruits."

"And so it is."

"Then... you made an exception for this girl?"

"Have you seen me train the girl?"

_He had not._

"Then perhaps you trained her before a man's return from his mission in the west, when the girl was but two and ten and newly arrived here," the younger man suggested, but the sinking feeling that was intensifying in his gut told him that this was not the correct explanation.

The elder gazed at his former apprentice and chuckled lightly, saying, "Oh, _Jaqen._ " His tone was chiding and he shook his head slightly.

The Lorathi looked up at him in surprise. His master was not one to use names very often, and certainly not false names. It had been years since the man had called him anything other than _brother._

"Did you think that you were the only man the girl had ever named?" the Kindly Man persisted.

"A man does not understand."

"No, I suppose you wouldn't, but I have great faith in your intellect. I think you can puzzle it out. I can see the beginnings of understanding sparking in your eyes even as we speak, though I do not think you wish to accept what your heart knows."

Jaqen gazed at Tyto quietly for a moment. The Braavosi man had always been exceptionally good at seeing the truth of things, especially when it was not carefully guarded.

"Why have you chosen _now_ to wear this face again?" the Lorathi finally asked.

"Why do you waste time asking questions to which you already know the answers?"

"A man is having trouble believing the obvious answer. He would hear you say it to convince him."

"Very well, then. I am wearing this face now because it is my favorite face, and because Arya Stark is not here to see it."

Jaqen's skin felt instantly cold at his master's confirmation but still, he pressed on.

"And the reason you do not wish the girl to see this face...?"

"Is because she believes me dead," the elder supplied.

Jaqen drew his hand over his mouth, rubbing his palm absently across his lips and chin as he considered his master's words. After a few moments, he spoke again.

"You were in Westeros. You knew a girl," the Lorathi concluded slowly. At the older man's slight nod, the assassin continued. "But where? Not Harrenhal. A man would have known. King's Landing? Were you in the city while a man sat in the black cells enjoying the society of wretched men and vermin?"

The principal elder gave his former apprentice a broad grin in answer.

"But... what does a girl know of Tyto Arturis? It is only recently she has mentioned this name, and a man would have known..." Jaqen protested.

"Of Tyto Arturis, the girl knows nothing," the elder admitted, "but in King's Landing, I did not use that name, though I did use my true face. It seems we are alike in that, brother."

"A girl knew you, then."

"By a different name, but yes."

Jaqen closed his eyes and breathed out the name, wondering how he had not realized it before now.

"Syrio Forel," he said in a defeated tone.

"Yes, brother. It seems I've known the girl even longer than you have."

All at once, the disparate pieces seemed to fit together for Jaqen.

_Oh, lovely girl, a man did not understand how far back this really went..._

"You met her as a young child in the Red Keep. Her father gave you a place in his household, to train her with her little blade."

"Yes, he did, but I knew her even before that, brother. I saw her receive that first blade; saw her _name_ the thing. The moment was touching, truly, but when I saw how she looked at it, when I saw her slash at the invisible enemies before her, I _knew..._ "

The elder grew quiet with his memory so the Lorathi prompted him.

"You knew?"

Tyto's soft gaze sharpened and he looked at the assassin.

"I knew she was the one. There were too many signs to ignore. The wolf, the sword, her singular spirit... It had to be _her._ "

Jaqen turned his master's words over in his mind and then said, "You were in Winterfell? All the time a man was trailing the dragon queen and riding through the Dothraki Sea, you were in Westeros, following a child down the King's Road and into the capital?"

"You knew I was on a mission."

"But... _nobles_ were dying all over the land. The Hand of King Robert. _Both_ of them, and the king himself! A man had assumed..."

"No, brother, that was not my work."

The Lorathi sat back in his seat, trying to make sense of it all, remarking, "You were right, brother. There is much a man does not yet understand."

"Just so," the elder replied with a kind smile. "I shall have food brought to you, and then we shall talk. There are great things afoot, my boy. Great things."

Somehow, despite his master's assurances about _great things,_ Jaqen was not comforted. He could not shake his growing apprehension and Tyto still had not told him what had become of the girl.

The elder stood, saying, "Valar morghulis, brother." And with that, Tyto Arturis, the greatest living swordsman in Braavos (and likely the whole of the world), swept from the room, leaving his former apprentice to mull over his words.

* * *

When the principal elder finally returned to the council chamber, two serving men followed him, bearing platters of food which they placed on the table before the Lorathi. Just before they left, one pressed a packet into his hand. It was wrapped in a clean, white cloth and the man said simply, "From Umma." Jaqen knew then that it was spice cake and he smiled a little to himself, feeling half a boy again.

Tyto ate sparingly and sipped at his wine, watching his former apprentice devour his meal.

"It was not my intention to starve you, brother," the older man remarked apologetically, "but we have been so busy. These past few days were quite eventful."

_Eventful._

Jaqen had always admired his master's gift for understatement.

After the younger assassin's hunger was sated, the principal elder began to speak. He told the tale of how he had worn the face of a servant so that he might travel with Robert Baratheon's royal party during the last leg of their journey up the King's Road to Winterfell. He related how upon his arrival at the famed stronghold, he had been able to easily move about the castle, changing faces as needed so that he might observe the Stark children and their wolves. Jaqen's raised eyebrows seemed to invite explanation, and so Tyto interrupted his recounting to provide one, though the Lorathi was not sure things were any clearer once he had.

"There have always been rumors about the Starks, you know. I was determined to see if there was any truth to them."

Tyto had accompanied the party south again, keeping a close watch on the youngest Stark daughter.

"There were those who believed that the older girl should have been the one, but they had not seen what I had seen, and I was able to convince them."

Jaqen remained quiet, listening, determined to understand his master's meaning.

Upon their arrival in King's Landing, it had been simple enough for Tyto to pose as a gold cloak, a Lannister household guard, a baker—he used whatever face was required to gain access to any parts of the keep where he found he had need to be. It was a stroke of luck when Eddard Stark decided his youngest girl should be trained with her small sword. Well, luck and some suggestive words in the right ears.

"I was able to present myself with impeccable credentials, and the training fit the Lord's purposes as well as the purposes of the order. It almost seemed as if the Many-Faced god was clearing a path for me."

The Lorathi finally broke his silence.

"It was always Arya Stark you wanted."

Tyto gave his former apprentice a delighted smile, saying, "Just so! And we have you to thank for bringing her to us. In the chaos surrounding the queen regent's mad power grab, I had feared that the girl was lost for good. Endless searching of the Red Keep and the streets of the city turned up nothing. It was clever of her to evade not only the queen's men, but me as well. And how clever of _you_ to finally find her for us! Truly, the Many-Faced god works remarkable miracles."

"So your purpose in the Stark household involved only the girl, not her father?"

"It was entirely to do with her," the elder agreed.

"You had always meant to train her, then."

"Not as an assassin. That just turned out to be the most sensible course once her father was killed and she escaped into the world, alone and friendless," the elder explained, looking at the Lorathi. "Well, not entirely alone and friendless, as it turned out. She found a Faceless benefactor for herself."

"Still, you allowed her to train among the brothers of the order for years, and yet you did not allow her to succeed. When she was meant to be earning her face, you intentionally arranged her failure."

It was mostly guess-work on Jaqen's part as he still did not know the details of what had occurred in the main temple chamber the night before. The principal elder gave a small nod, conceding that this was indeed the truth.

"You never meant for her to take her vows. Why would the order spend nearly four years training a girl to purposely fail?" Jaqen demanded.

"Why would the order seek to make _faceless_ a girl who's primary value is in her very face?" Tyto countered.

_Again, his master's responses only left him with more questions._

"A man would know how this thing was done. You still have not told the tale of the girl's trial."

His master obliged him and told him of what had transpired in the temple during the prior evening. He explained how the girl had chosen her weapon and had been prepared to mercilessly cut the throat of a man marked for death until she discovered some familiar markings on the very neck she had intended to open.

"Scars from cat scratches, I believe," the elder remarked blandly. Jaqen's fingers drifted unconsciously to his own marked neck and his fingers trailed over the silvery lines of his healed wound. "She was too shaken then to _truly see._ I blame myself for that. I can't help but think that if I had been given more time with the girl in Westeros, I might have sharpened that skill enough to have helped her in this instance. Still, her deficiency was to our ultimate benefit."

The principal elder's unconcerned manner grated on Jaqen.

"Who was it?" the assassin asked tersely.

"Who wore your face? This time, it was her Westerosi brother."

" _This_ time?"

The elder chuckled then.

"Surely you can think of another time when someone borrowed your face, brother."

Jaqen's mouth had a grim set to it.

"When a girl was thrown into the canal to drown," he gritted out.

"Oh!" Tyto cried in mock offense. "No, brother, no harm was meant to her. We had to be sure of her skill before we could proceed with our plan, though. So much depends on it. But I would have never let her drown. Surely you know that."

"So the principal elder _was_ there when this thing was done," the Lorathi commented without surprise.

"Well, there are some who would say _Jaqen H'ghar_ was there, but yes."

" _But why?_ Why use a man's face to do this thing?" the Lorathi asked, recalling that night; recalling his lovely girl, damp and shivering in her muck-stained shift.

The elder placed his palms flat against the table and leaned back in his chair, looking at his former apprentice, gauging his emotion.

"She had grown to trust you too much," he explained after a moment. "I had hoped to break that trust. Believe me, brother, it was as much for you and the girl as it was for my own purposes. I underestimated her regard for you, however. It was you who she sought out immediately after the incident, not me as I had hoped."

"Yes, she sought out a man... _with a blade_."

"But you were able to win her trust fairly easily after that, were you not?"

Jaqen had to concede that this was true. He frowned and then returned his attention to the tale of the girl's trial.

"So this rat-faced acolyte conjured a man's face and his scars and kneeled before a girl's blade," the younger assassin summarized.

"Just so."

"The girl bears her brother no love, and he has only disdain for her," the assassin continued.

"Again, you are correct."

"If the girl had obeyed the principal elder and slain this boy as she was instructed, the sacrifice would not have been adequate to conjure a face. She could not have earned her face regardless of which choice she made."

"But we always knew which path she would choose, didn't we brother?"

Jaqen gazed at his master with fathomless eyes and made him no reply.

"She is so much like her master in this," the elder remarked.

The Lorathi shook his head, seeing every misstep, every action that was less discreet than it ought to have been, every instance when he trusted where he should not have. He saw his own arrogance and how in not reining it in, he had failed his lovely girl. For all of his worldliness and circumspection and experience, when he had been within the temple walls with the girl who was his very reason for _everything_ , he had behaved with a foolish naiveté that shamed him now, and they were both suffering the consequences.

"Why did you allow it?" Jaqen asked after a moment.

"What? Why did I allow you to love? Why did I allow this folly to continue? Why did I not immediately send you away on a mission as soon as it became clear to me that I could not trust you to obey any longer?"

His words convicted the younger man, guilt welling up within him and threatening to overwhelm him. He simply nodded at his master's words.

"Because," the elder replied, his tone a touch _satisfied,_ "if I did not allow her to have _something,_ then there would be nothing I could take from her."

Jaqen looked appalled, and he did not bother to hide it from his master.

"Do not think me heartless. I love that girl," Tyto insisted. "That does not change what must be."

"If you desired this... if you needed something to take from her, why did you warn a man away from the girl?"

"Oh, brother, I had hoped to spare you. Believe what you will of me, but I do not desire your pain."

"Why did you warn a girl away then, if you needed for her to have this thing?"

Tyto laughed then, shrugging his shoulders slightly and looking down at his hands, resting elegantly upon the surface of the table.

"If you wish to ensure that a young girl will desire something, do you know of a better way than to tell her that she cannot have it?"

* * *

The principal elder and the Lorathi assassin talked well into the night, the older man choosing which of the younger man's questions to answer and which to wave away dismissively (though mostly, he was forthcoming). He explained how he had first suspected the girl was some variety of skinchanger as far back as his time with her in Winterfell, witnessing firsthand her bond with her wolf as well as some of the girl's behavior as she slept.

"Her dreams were such active things," the elder explained, "and if one paid close attention, there was a correlation in her wolf's behavior at times. The howls echo in that place, brother. It's almost otherworldly."

Jaqen was aghast, exclaiming, "You watched the girl _sleep_?"

His master threw him a withering look and continued, explaining that even as a nine year old moppet, her bow skills were quite developed and she had a natural grace that was overlooked by most of the members of the household due to her frequently disheveled and careless appearance. _A natural at disguises,_ he had said, laughing.

"And then there was such a fierceness about her. She was like a tiny warrior queen. Like Nymeria come again."

The Lorathi assassin believed it an apt description. He had thought something similar during the early days of their journey up the King's Road among the recruits of the Night's Watch.

"Even then, she had the early makings of our _Cat._ She could evade septas and servants and household guards with a stealth that would be envied by some seasoned masters!" Tyto exclaimed jovially. His light mood when discussing his memories made Jaqen suspect that his regard for Arya was a genuine thing. "Where other children might stomp away petulantly or skulk with shame when corrected for minor infractions, she stole away like a shadow, plotting some small revenge or another against her siblings or her septa."

If he weren't so concerned about her situation in the present, these remembrances of the girl's past would have made her lover smile.

The elder told Jaqen of the unpleasant incident on the King's Road during which the girl had defended her friend against a prince who was little more than a cruel bully. The life of Sansa Stark's wolf had been demanded in retribution for that show of bravery and defiance.

"The girl's own wolf was saved by her sacrifice, but even after they parted, there was a strong connection."

"How could you know this?" Jaqen asked.

"My boy, have you not guessed?"

Jaqen's look was one of confusion. His master smiled at him fondly; ever the teacher; ever the _father_.

"With practice, it is easy for one skinchanger to know another."

The Lorathi fought to contain his surprise and carefully examined his master's expression, reading the truth in his face. He did not comment but merely nodded at the elder who continued his tale, describing his time with the girl in King's Landing, first as a mere observer wearing various faces, and finally as her trusted dancing master.

"She did not really understand her gift then. She thought of the time spent with her wolf as dreams and she could only touch a man's mind briefly, and not at will, seemingly. I am certain that she was not even fully aware of it when it happened. Still, the skill informed her swordplay, in small ways."

"Why did you not help her develop this talent?" the assassin wished to know. "Why not tell her? Why not train her in this?"

The elder formed a small pyramid with his fingers and placed it under his chin as he considered his answer. He looked as if he were judging whether or not to reveal a secret. After a time, he seemed to come to a decision and so spoke.

"This particular gift, this gift of changing skins with _men_ , is not one I possess, I'm afraid."

"You might still have trained her," the Lorathi began to object.

"And give her the power to read _my_ mind? Know _my_ plans? When I had no ability to know what _she_ was thinking? It did not seem... prudent."

"Yet you intend to exploit this gift in some way."

"Indeed I do, but it need not be perfected for my purposes. Besides, she has two Faceless Men at her side now. They have been instructed to help her with her skill. Every time she uses it, it grows stronger."

"She has two Faceless..."

"Yes, yes," the elder interrupted. "I suppose now you want to know where she is going and for what purpose."

"Just so."

Tyto glared at his former apprentice briefly, seemingly unappreciative of the mocking tone of his reply. Jaqen made no move that could be construed as even the tiniest bit contrite, for he grew impatient.

"The girl has taken your passage, brother. Even now, she likely sleeps in the bed you had secured for yourself on the _Titan's Daughter_." Of course, Tyto had no way of knowing he was only partly correct. Though Arya _was_ stretched out on the bed that had been intended for her master, she was not sleeping, but was instead weeping rather uncontrollably after having placed Jaqen's letter in a drawer near where her head was buried in her pillow.

"Where are you sending her?"

"I'm surprised you have to ask, brother. To Winterfell, of course. To the North. To her birthright."

"And the Faceless Men who accompany her?"

"Her brothers, newly made assassins. One dedicated to his duty, the other dedicated to the girl."

Jaqen grunted in frustration, practically spitting, " _Green boys!_ "

The elder smiled slightly but said nothing.

"A man would have gladly undertaken this task!" the Lorathi declared. "Westeros is a land full of men who would seek to kill this girl, or abduct her to use for their own purposes, yet you send her to such a place under the protection of the _least_ skilled men the temple can offer?" He was nearly beside himself. "This land is overrun with soldiers, outlaws, wolves, and... _other things_!"

"I have never met a girl with _less_ need of protection than Arya Stark," the elder chuckled.

Jaqen was not appeased. His bronze eyes were fiery and his jaw worked as he clenched and unclenched his fist. The angry display was uncharacteristic but rather than intimidate the formerly _kindly_ man, it seemed to exasperate him.

"These are your sworn brothers now, and have trained in this house for more years than you did when I first sent you out into the world," the elder reminded his former apprentice icily. "They can protect the girl well enough against brigands and soiled knights."

 _But who will protect her from herself?_ the Lorathi wondered.

"Don't worry, my boy," Tyto said soothingly. "You will see the girl again. But first, I have need of you in the South."

This was the first indication that the principal elder intended to send the Lorathi assassin on a mission. The elder spent the next several minutes explaining what was expected of the assassin. It seemed that the road to his love would lead Jaqen through Dorne, in the guise of a trusted (or, perhaps a _not-so-trusted_ ) friend of the little dragon queen.

"Do not fail me in this," the principal elder warned. "I would be _most displeased_ to learn that your haste to see our lovely Cat again led to any carelessness which might compromise our sacred purpose."

The threat was not stated directly, but it did not need to be. The girl was flanked by two Faceless assassins; men who had taken vows to do as they were bid by the order. If the principal elder suspected that his former apprentice was planning to rush to Arya's side and spirit her away, word could be sent for her brothers to hide her away or dispose of her before he could manage to reach her. They were sent for protection, but not _hers._ They were meant to protect the plans of the principal elder. Jaqen doubted that the Bear could be persuaded to harm his sister, but the Westerosi boy...

The Lorathi clenched his jaw, not liking the task that had been given to him ( _what would his lovely girl think, if she knew?_ ) but understanding that he was outflanked. He would do his duty, because it was the only way to protect his love.

They had been talking for what seemed like hours and the younger man had grown weary. He had lost his taste for verbal sparring and intrigue, and so asked bluntly, "What do you hope to accomplish with all these schemes and plans, brother?"

Tyto appraised Jaqen keenly and then gave him a most unexpected answer.

"That girl will bring us dragons."

Jaqen cocked his head, thinking for a moment before he responded, "A man wonders if his master means the gold variety or fire breathing beasts. Or perhaps you mean their silver haired masters."

"My boy," the elder began, sounding affronted, "I should hope that you would know me well enough to know that I would never settle for any less than all three. All that, and more besides."

_More? Tyto had already claimed she would bring them treasure, magic, and power. What more was there?_

"And so you have banished the girl to that barbaric land for gold and power? For such fleeting things, you have traded her life away?"

"No, no, brother, you mistake me. It is the future I seek to shape. The future of our order, for the glory of our god!"

"I do not understand." Jaqen felt as if he had been saying that all night.

"No, of course not, how could you? I have been remiss. I have kept you ignorant, for fear you would not see... For fear that your love would blind you. But I can tell you all now, as I have longed to do."

"A man is _eager_ to hear," the Lorathi replied flatly.

"She will be wed to the dragon king, brother! It has been arranged for years. That boy has magic in his blood, as strong as her own. Just consider the potential of a dragon king and a winter wolf, both with such _unique_ talents. What will their children be like? To have both fire and winter in their veins? To be able to command dragons, to change skins, to know the unspoken thoughts of men, to _dictate_ the thoughts of men... Their children will be able to call upon all the power that exists in the world!"

Jaqen looked aghast.

"You plan to... take her children?"

"Oh, just one, brother. Just the one that was promised to the Many-Faced god. Her second born. The first, of course, will be the heir, and you know how the Westerosi are about their heirs. But the _second,_ be it a son or a daughter, will be ours, to rear in the ways of the order from a young age, just as you were. Perhaps I shouldn't have a preference, but I _do_ hope it's a daughter, don't you? It would be fitting, I think."

The Lorathi assassin merely stared silently at the elder. He was having trouble forming the words to express how appalling he found it all.

"Imagine it, brother!" Tyto persisted excitedly. "A child born of both flame and ice, with dragon blood and the power of the old gods coursing through her veins, favored by Him of Many Faces and trained within these walls! Who could stand against us? There would be no limit to what we could accomplish!"

"This is a man's love you speak of, and you would sell her into slavery! There are perhaps only a handful of men in the world that she cannot best with her blade and her wits! She has a talent that is so rare, it is believed by most to be gone from this world, yet you would... you would make her nothing more than some foreign king's concubine! No, it's worse than that. You would make her no better than a _brood mare!_ "

"No, never that, brother," the elder protested. "I would make her a _queen._ A queen and... _and the mother of our future!_ "

Jaqen was struck dumb, caught between disbelief and disgust and rage. His master was _mad._ It was _madness._ He was once again left without a coherent response. His hands nearly shook with the want to pound his fist on the table then; to wrap his fingers around his master's throat and squeeze until the elder saw reason. He clutched at his knees, commanding himself to maintain his calm.

"The girl would have made an exceptional assassin, there is no denying it, but her _child_... A child made with _this man..._ " Tyto continued. The elder seemed to become lost in his own contemplation of the glorious future which awaited the order, due entirely to his ingenious plans. The Lorathi could easily imagine the future exploits of which his old master was dreaming just then. He could well imagine them himself.

_A chestnut haired girl with violet eyes and skin like snow, lithe in form and as graceful as a cat; a mere glance from her in a man's direction and he would throw himself into the sea or place a noose around his own neck. She would be a master of effortless and bloodless assassinations, delivering the gift while armed with nothing more substantial than the merest whim. Or, perhaps she would be like a destructive wraith, burning whole cities to cinder with great, flying beasts who were bound to a young girl's will; armies and innocents consumed in an instant by dragon fire in exchange for coin and influence._

But there were too many variables and they made the outcome impossible to predict. Arya Stark could be barren. She could die in childbirth with her first babe (he closed his eyes briefly as he thought of it). She might slit the dragon king's throat before he could ever get a child on her; indeed, before he even had the chance to lay with her (this thought made the assassin smile slightly). She might refuse to marry altogether, or choose a different husband before Aegon ever made the trek North to claim her. She might disappear in the countryside without ever seeing Winterfell. She could threaten a ship's captain with her tiny skewer to turn the vessel around and be back in the temple by the morning (he had to admit that this were merely wishful thinking on his part).

"You have thrown aside what was surety for an unknown future, brother," the Lorathi said. "You have banished a gifted servant of the Many-Faced god without knowing for a certainty that you will have the reward you seek."

"Worry is not for us, brother. I have faith that my reward will come. I have toiled too long in the shadows to be denied now."

Jaqen simply shook his head, wishing for his master to see the plan for the farce that it was. Tyto seemed unaware of the gesture as he continued his attempts to justify his scheme to his former apprentice.

"And do not forget, despite our fondness for the little wretch, we cannot pretend that the girl is a perfect candidate for Facelessness. I could never tame her thirst for revenge, though not for lack of trying," the elder reminded him. "Just as I could never train your stubbornness out of you or the jealousy out of your brother."

"Nor the ambition out of yourself."

The elder might have been angered by that, but he seemed amused instead, curling up one side of his mouth into a half-smile before he responded in his typically unaffected way.

"Just so. But then, we are all of us imperfect men, I suppose." Here, Tyto stopped to laugh lightly and then added, "Imperfect men and one _lovely girl._ "

Jaqen could not argue with the statement. He certainly had his share of faults, some of which he blamed for his current circumstances, _and_ hers.

"So it is your intention to return the girl west and dangle her before this Targaryen boy."

"The girl will retake her childhood home and then her claim will be the most desirable in all of the world for our young dragon king. He will not be able to resist such a bride; not when she comes with the whole of the North wrapped neatly in her pocket."

"There seems to be a fatal flaw in your plan," Jaqen told his master softly.

"Oh? What flaw do you see, brother?"

"Arya Stark has a sister. Even if no brothers return to stake a claim to the North, there is a sister who is the elder, tucked away in the Vale."

Tyto snorted lightly, his derision evident.

"Women are such fragile creatures," was his disdainful comment. "They flicker like ghosts in and out of this world. I do not expect _Sansa Stark_ to present a threat to my plans. If she somehow tried, well... _valar_ _morghulis_."

 _Flicker like ghosts?_ Jaqen thought then. He thought of how he had once known a ghost, and she did not flicker. She stood bravely and fought fiercely, often with more courage than sense as he recalled. She faced choking smoke and roaring fire to save him and she ended the lives of men with her own small hand. While others fell away, succumbing to death and fear, she survived. She traveled across half the world to find him again, armed with only a small sword and an iron coin against all the threats and dangers of two continents and the sea between them.

_No, his lovely girl was no such fragile creature._

She had traveled to find him when she was nothing more than a half-starved girl. Now it was his turn, and so he would travel half the world to find her again.

Tyto interrupted the assassin's reverie.

"I know it has been hard on you, this... _parting._ But you will not smart for long, brother. You leave for Dorne on the morrow."

"A man leaves for Dorne so that he may influence these dragons in the way you wish and then travel with them to the North in order to witness this travesty?"

"You will not need to influence the dragons much. Their course has been guided and set by others for a long while now. Only the dragon queen resists, but I think you can change her mind easily enough. As for witnessing a travesty, I would rather you see it as doing the will of the Many-Faced god and playing your part in history."

"How do you know that the girl will do as you wish?"

"Because it is the will of our god," Tyto answered, "and because I will have you there to guide her."

The Lorathi's voice was quiet but steady as he posed another question.

"And how do you know that a man will do as your wish?"

The elder placed his arms upon the table, folding one atop the other and then leaned over them, moving closer to his former apprentice.

"Because, brother, you understand that obedience is a choice," the principal elder answered, "and that disobedience has consequences... _for all involved._ "

* * *

After his startling revelation, the Rat has been warned by the Lyseni assassin that he should return to the safety of his bunk.

"I won't be able to hold her back forever, brother." As if to prove his point, Arya cursed in frustration and struggled against the Bear's grasp. The girl's hand fell to her sword hilt. That was enough to send the lanky Westerosi scurrying off without another word. The large assassin was left alone with his sister, holding her firmly until their brother was below decks and the girl was less likely to give chase.

"What brought all that on?" the Lyseni asked the Cat quietly once they were alone. He released his grip on her and she turned to face him, hands on her hips. "I thought you were going to sleep."

"I tried, but..."

She wanted to tell him that there was much to occupy her mind and much to deny her peace, but as she tried, she felt that painful lump again, climbing up her throat. As she bit her lip to prevent a sob from escaping her, she looked up at him, her eyes shiny with unshed tears in the lantern light, unable to say any more.

"I know," her friend said, negating the need for her to continue. "It's alright." He held his arms open for her and she fell against him, returning willingly to his embrace, this time given for comfort rather than to prevent her from acting on her violent impulses. Her face was pressed against his chest and so when she spoke to him, her voice was muffled, but he understood her well enough.

"Did you know, brother? Did you know that it wasn't him?"

The boy grunted with mild irritation, and his tone was gruff as he demanded, "How can you even ask me that? Of course I didn't know!" He hugged her fiercely, and then whispered, "Don't you know that I will always choose you? You are where my loyalty lies."

She seemed to slump a little as she said, "I'm sorry. It's just..."

"It's a shock, I know sister. You're forgiven."

The girl turned her head, resting her cheek against the Bear as she peered out into the blackness over the water. She took a deep breath of chill salt air.

"Do you think he's still alive?" Arya asked, fighting to keep her voice steady. The boy sighed into the mass of chestnut waves that cascaded from her crown.

"I don't know, sister. It may be that he really did leave Braavos for a mission after all. He could even now be on a ship, just like us, with no idea of what has happened. Or, perhaps he was already dead by the time you entered the temple to earn your face. How can we know for sure?

She thought about that. How could she know? Arya closed her eyes and tried to _feel_ Jaqen, but all she felt was the furious battle between hope and despair, deep in her core. She thought then that she might take Needle and threaten Captain Terys with it, forcing him to turn the ship around and head back to Braavos, but she quickly discarded the plan for its obvious flaws. She thought about waiting until their arrival on the eastern coast of Westeros and then booking passage home, perhaps with one of the two iron coins she had been given, but that would waste too much precious time. She thought of using her gift in order to dream her way into the little cat that prowled the temple so that she might use the tom to look for Jaqen, but she had never entered any creature but Nymeria through her dreams and she wasn't even sure that such a thing was possible. The more her mind scrambled to find a scheme that would somehow reunite her with the man she loved, the more desolate she felt. The truth was, if Jaqen was alive, he could be _anywhere_ and if... if he wasn't, then a trip back to Braavos would be dangerous and pointless besides.

The girl curled even further into her brother, fighting to push her hope away and fighting to prevent her hope from dying, all at once. Her insides felt shredded and she nestled against the Bear, hoping for some comfort; for some relief from her pain and uncertainty. After long minutes had passed in silence, the boy finally addressed his sister.

"Cat, you can't... You can't do that again." He was referring to her _disagreement_ with their rat-faced brother. "You have to be _smarter_."

The girl looked up at her brother skeptically.

"I'm serious," the assassin admonished Arya sternly. "When I pulled you back, you had nearly pushed him overboard."

"No great loss, that," she snorted.

" _You would have gone with him."_

She shrugged, whispering, "No great loss, that."

The Bear groaned and she felt a rumbling his chest, the vibrations signaling his displeasure.

"Not this again, Cat," he said balefully. "If you bear me any love at all..."

"I do!" Arya declared, pressing her face into his chest again. "Oh, Bear, you know I do!"

"I was sent here to protect you. I plan to do that, or die in the effort. When you are so reckless..."

The girl interrupted him, saying, "I have always been reckless, brother. Surely you remember that. I do not mean it as a personal insult to you. Do you expect me to change who I am?"

"No, sister. I don't expect that. I don't _want_ that. I just want you to be... sensible."

_A girl has always had more courage than sense._

"I know. I know," she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut to force Jaqen's voice from her head as she clung to the Lyseni. "I'm sorry. I'll.. do better."

She wanted to tell her brother that she _had_ been sensible. It was her sense that kept her from leaping overboard as the _Titan's Daughter_ pulled away from port that morning, for there was certainly a part of her that had yearned to climb onto the deck railing and dive into the churning waters below the ship. It was sense that stopped her from swimming back to shore with Needle clamped between her teeth, for a part of her wished to run through the streets of Braavos until she reached the temple. A part of her wished to throw open the ebony and weirwood doors and call out for the Kindly Man to come and meet her with his steel. A part of her did not wish to wait for her revenge. But then her _sense_ had told her this was folly. It was her sense that made her recall how the principal elder had so easily defeated her. It was her sense that made her remember the handsome man's words to her. _The two of us together would be no match for your Kindly Man._ She recalled the elder's blade skills, impossibly honed, marked by an intensity and a delicate precision that sacrificed none of his strength; a study in swiftness, with a grace that she envied. Arya could not recall ever having seen the elder spar before, and so she had been shocked by the challenge he presented.

_The impossible challenge._

She had only seen one other man demonstrate such impressive skill, and he had died in another lifetime.

And so she did not dive overboard. She did not swim for shore with only her thoughts of revenge to fuel her. She did not storm the temple as a force of one, crying out for the Kindly Man to face her. She did not fall upon his blade and bleed out on the temple floor, one more offering to Him of Many Faces. She did not die with Jaqen's name upon her lips, a last wish offered up to the heavens as the Stranger met her glassy gaze. She did not do any of those things even though the more reckless part of her urged her to take this path.

 _How's that for more sense than courage, Jaqen?_ she thought.

She had stayed aboard, _sensibly_. Dying as a martyr for the idea of her love was not her goal. Death was her goal. _His_ death, even though she had learned that the elder had raised his sword to remove an imposter's head (and that, only pretense anyway) rather than Jaqen's. Her master might or might not be alive, but the grain of hope she felt did little to assuage her anger at the Kindly Man. He was the architect of this suffering, and her mind was consumed with the idea of repaying him in kind. She knew she would need to be better if she was to face him; she would need to become greater than she was. She would have to sharpen her skills. She would practice. She would bide her time. And yes, she would go back to Winterfell, because even though it was what the elder wanted, and therefore was somehow of benefit to the order, it was also what _she_ wanted, and she would use it to her own benefit.

She felt if not exactly soothed, at least more _settled_ after having made the decision. She would go back to Winterfell, but she would not grow comfortable or complacent; she would not forget. _And she would not forgive_. She would see her Kindly Man again, and there would be a reckoning. Only one of them would survive it. She intended to be the one.

She felt the Lyseni's grasp tighten around her as if he sensed her murderous plans. She wrapped her arms around his waist, returning his embrace as she gave him her promise again.

"Don't worry. I'll be smarter. I'm going to do better."

_She did not tell him what she intended to do better._

The Bear grasped his sister's chin and tilted her face up so that she was looking into his sad eyes and murmured, "Thank you. I know that you have been grieving. I know it has been hard for you." He placed a lingering kiss on her forehead and the Cat closed her eyes, feeling guilty again.

"No harder than it has been for you," the girl replied, her voice soft and low. "You were right. You warned me, and I was too stupid to listen to you. I was too stupid to leave when I had the chance."

"I take no pleasure in being right."

"I know."

The Bear held on tight to his sister, feeling her slight frame tremble in his arms. He asked her if she was cold and she denied it, but he was concerned about her bare feet and her thin blouse with no cloak or doublet over it. He insisted that she return to her cabin, leading her by her hand like a wayward child. Her fingers felt cold as they twined with his and when they stepped into her cabin, he rubbed at her hand vigorously, trying to impart some of his warmth to her. The large Lyseni looked down at the girl, and smiled gently at her. She was all wintery skin and wide eyes and dark, waving hair. She was so beautiful, though she would deny it and likely threaten him if he dared to voice the thought. Still, whether she would admit it or not, it was the truth. As he gazed at her, he realized that he should want her for himself. He could see plainly that she was desirable but it had been trained out of him to want; to covet for himself. Hadn't it?

But that did not explain Olive. He could not explain Olive.

 _Love is a strange and terrible thing,_ the Bear decided.

He wondered briefly if duty was all there was anymore. He wondered if everything that had happened with Olive ( _if everything he had been made to do_ ) had rendered him incapable of that type of want any longer. His uncertainty was surely understandable. He had been crushed under the weight of his grief and guilt. His entire life had been shaped by his pursuit of one goal, and he had finally accomplished that goal when he took his vows and entered the order of Faceless Men, but he could not take pride in it. How could he bear the congratulatory words and murmured praises of his new brothers? He _hated_ all that he had done to earn those praises; hated _himself_ for what he had done. How could he serve the very order which had taken from him the only thing left in his life worth loving?

 _No, not the only thing,_ he thought then, moving his hand to grip the back of his sister's neck. Arya looked up at him curiously. He saw the unspoken question in her eyes.

"You're all I have, Cat," he reminded her. "Remember that. I wouldn't be able to stand losing you, too."

"No, I know. I told you that I would do..."

"I simply wish for you to understand. I don't want to harp..."

"Then don't harp," the girl interrupted, her mouth slowly curling itself into an impish smile. He studied her lips for a moment and did not realize he was staring until he noted that they began to curve downward into a frown. "What is it?" she wanted to know. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong," the boy insisted, dropping his hand from her neck and stepping away from her. He cleared his throat. "Is there anything else you need?"

Arya narrowed her eyes and gave the Bear a confused look, saying that she was fine.

"Goodnight then, sister," the Lyseni said a bit stiffly. His eyes drifted to the wooden case peeking from beneath her bed. "Will you show me what is in the box tomorrow?"

She nodded and the Bear smiled weakly at her before he turned and left, bound for his own bunk. Arya stared after him for a moment but then resolved that it was too late for her to solve the mysteries of yet another man in her life. She climbed under her sleeping furs, blew out her taper and drifted to sleep as the waves gently rocked her like a mother rocking her babe in a cradle.

* * *

 _ **Wish You Were Here—**_ Pink Floyd (did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage)

 _ **Come a Little Closer—**_ Cage the Elephant

 _ **Black**_ —Pearl Jam (I know you'll be a sun in somebody else's sky)

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have started a companion piece that explores some of the events of this story through the handsome man's eyes. If you're a handsome man fan or just want a few of the blanks filled in, check it out. It's called Morpheum. I'll be adding to it once this story is complete.
> 
> I have also created a Pinterest page on which I have pinned pictures of some of the people I think look most like the characters as written as well as other things I either used as references (like the schematic of Winterfell's layout I reference or the map of Braavos that I use) or that resemble my ideas (like clothing) most closely. I add to it periodically. If that sort of thing interests you, check it out. It's posted under the name Winterlyn Dow and the title of the board is The Assassin's Apprentice/Morpheum (public). There is also a link to it on my profile page on FFN.
> 
> This part of the story is nearly at its end. There is only an epilogue/short chapter remaining. Thanks for tolerating my overuse of adverbs (but I love them!) and my tendency to use 50 words to describe what could be described with 5.


	60. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stylistically odd and chronologically wonky (slightly), but all on purpose…

* * *

There is a girl, though she would take exception to being referred to as such (she has just passed her sixteenth nameday and is now a woman grown) and there is a boy (he has no such qualms; call him a boy and he is not offended, but he is nearly nine and ten and cannot reasonably be called a boy any longer, especially when accounting for the size of him). They are together on the deck of a trading galleass, their eyes narrowed against the hard brightness of the sun overhead. She is fulfilling a promise that she made, showing this man the gift she has received from her lover or her dancing master or the ghosts of the North or Fate herself, whichever story you may believe.

The steel glints in that same harsh light, creating sunbursts which assault their eyes as the blade moves with the twisting of her wrists, this way and that, catching the sun, then dodging it, then catching it again. There is detail that was not apparent to her in the weak light thrown from a single taper. She now sees things that she did not before, and he does, too.

* * *

"It was too late to forge the steel as it ought to have been done," Tyto says somewhat sourly, "but there was time for minor modifications."

"A man noted these _changes_ when he retrieved the blades from the armorer. The inscriptions all made sense, save one."

"But now, brother? Now do you understand it?"

"A man understands," the Lorathi acknowledges and he is not happy though his face and his voice show nothing.

* * *

"What does it say?" the boy asks, bending to draw his eye closer to the etching.

"Valar morghulis," the girl replies, squinting at the looping characters midway down Frost's blade. When she flips the sword over, she sees the response on the reverse side. "Valar dohaeris."

"I guess they want you to remember where you came from," the boy says, a trifle bitterly.

"I came from the North."

_Defiant. Stubborn_.

Though he is glad of it, glad of her spirit showing itself to be intact still, he thinks _this is how she ended up on a boat bound for Westeros in the first place_. He is wrong.

"What about the other one? Does it have any etchings?"

"I'm not sure. I couldn't see them last night."

They inspect the larger blade then, their bowed heads touching as they bend over the steel together.

" _S_ _ō_ _nar M_ _ā_ _zis,_ " the Cat reads.

"My High Valyrian isn't as good as yours," he admits and she snorts as she remembers his struggles with that particular language. "Winter is coming?"

"The words of House Stark," the girl confirms.

"And the other side?"

She turns the blade over and squints at the etchings in the steel.

_"Perzys_ _ā_ _nog_ _ā_ _r,"_ the girl pronounces grimly after a moment.

The boy's brow is furrowed in concentration and he flicks his eyes to hers. "Bleeding fire?"

" _Fire and blood."_

"Fire and blood? What does that mean?" the boy asks. He knows little and less about the words of the great Westerosi houses.

"It means dragons," she answers with a frown. "It means war."

"If there's to be a war, we will fight it together," he vows with seriousness. He is resolute, loyal, and so very brave. She wants to smile at him but she cannot. Though she neglected her needlework and her courtesies, giving her septa fits, she gave her maester no such trouble. She has learned her history, and she remembers it well. She remembers brave kings who bent the knee. She remembers the blackened, melted towers of Harrenhal as if she had left them behind only yesterday.

"There is no fighting dragons, brother. You either command them, or you are turned to ash."

* * *

_There is a Myrish assassin who had once been named_ Gaelon _but is now called_ brother _, or sometimes,_ the handsome man _(but only in a certain girl's thoughts and never out loud, so this particular appellation remains her secret, hidden from him, though knowing of it would have certainly pleased him). There is a part of him that loves fiercely and feels deeply, but that part he keeps well-hidden, as he has been instructed by life, or his master. Perhaps both. So, despite his face, which sometimes appears placid and sometimes gives the impression of intense concentration as he walks through the streets of Braavos, his heart feels heavy with loss and he cannot understand how it is that everyone has left him._

_A new look flashes across his face, but it comes and goes so quickly that none are able to note it (she would have noted it, with that piercing grey gaze, but she is settling into a berth meant for another now and is not here to see his look and comment upon it and make him question himself). It is the look that means he is berating himself for his own heartbreak. For allowing himself to feel it, and be so affected by it. For allowing something as useless as love to make him forget who he is, and who he is_ not.

_"Brother," he murmurs despite his distaste at the forlorn sound of it. He sighs. He actually_ sighs _. Two boys run past him in the street just then, the issue of the same mother, most like, and his memory casts itself back of its own accord. He is shot through with longing as he thinks of a time nearly twenty namedays past._

_Two boys, of an age, running through these same streets on slender legs. The Lorathi's hair is long and streams behind him as he flies, a banner to follow. The Myrish boy tries to keep up, his soft, dark curls tangling in the breeze off the water. He recalls the sound of their laughter, and it is light and pure, not weighted by the cynicism of experience or hidden meanings or any disdain for the flaws they see in one another. They are simply_ happy, _in their way._

_"Wait for me, brother!" the slower boy cries, not expecting the mercy, but begging it anyway. Then, to his surprise, his brother does just that. He halts abruptly and turns, grinning broadly, revealing a small gap where a tooth will soon erupt. Without a word, the Lorathi holds out a bruised pear, an offering to his brother. They are not thieves, but this they have stolen, to prove that they could; to hone that skill. In doing so, they have learned one new thing. The fruit vendor at the market is too slow to catch them. Surely Tyto will be interested to know that, but their task is not yet done. They must learn two more things. Passing the pear between them, they scamper through the streets and down alleyways, seeking to learn something that they did not already know._

_Now, nearly twenty namedays later, Gaelon cannot recall what else he and his brother learned that day, but he remembers a deeper lesson, though he could not have articulated it back then, when he was only a beautiful little boy. It is the lesson of friendship; of what it means to truly be brothers. To consider someone as much as yourself; more than, even. To care. To make a vow that somehow translates to always being together; always watching out for one another. To enter the ebony and weirwood doors side by side, with one purpose; with the same intentions._

_When had his brother's purpose changed? When had his intentions shifted?_

_After all this time, after all their shared experience, after everything that looped and bound them together, to make a_ choice _which flew in the face of all that they were... all that they had been to one another... of all they had promised…_

_It was unforgivable._

* * *

The handsome assassin, choosing to occupy himself with various pursuits in Braavos after leaving the girl on her ship, found amusement in the usual way (the way that was usual when there were no acolytes to train or tease or torture). He was not built for grief, and so he chose to drown it rather than dwell on it. Still, the distractions proved only temporary and after having his fill of steel and of drink and of warm beds with willing women, he arrived at the temple, his mind once again heavy with his memories and his contemplation of the consequences of disobedience. Though he liked to think himself above emotion, deep inside of him, he knew this for the falsehood that it was. He was not above emotion, he was simply adept at masking it.

Almost without thought, his feet carried him down the masters' corridor, past his own chamber and to the door which opened into his brother's cell. He did not know what he sought, but he pushed inside anyway, and was startled to see his Lorathi brother staring back at him, still in possession of his own head and very much alive.

Jaqen might have been known among the assassins of the order for his mastery of his face, but upon seeing his brother, Gaelon ruled his own face admirably well. He seemed to master his roiling emotions with ease, flicking them away with no more difficulty than one might find in brushing a troublesome insect from one's sleeve.

_Would that appearances reflected reality._

"Oh," was all the Myrish man said, his voice devoid of all the surprise and joy and disappointment and relief and anger that crashed in on him just then.

The Lorathi was quiet, waiting for more. He did not get it.

"A man has wondered if his brother knew of the deception or if he would be surprised to find a man alive," Jaqen finally said. "Your apprentice was involved in the plot, after all."

"Which one?" the handsome master inquired casually, his words meant to sting his brother. Even now, he could not tame his jealousy.

Jaqen merely glared at him and then asked, "Did you know?"

Gaelon laughed mirthlessly, sweeping his hand toward his brother, saying, "This is all most unexpected, but I suppose I should be more shocked at myself for not realizing it before now."

_As if Tyto could ever be prevailed upon to sacrifice_ him. He felt half a fool for ever believing that the Lorathi could be dead.

"The principal elder did not include you in this plan?"

"Peripherally," the handsome man said with a shrug. Gaelon found it strange that he should have been so anguished, but he found it even stranger that when he discovered that the cause of his grief was nothing more than a lie, he was completely unwilling to express any relief for it. Rather, he showed only a very mild irritation at his own lack of foresight.

_This is what it means to be Faceless,_ he thought, perhaps a little sadly.

The two assassins stared at each other in silence for a long while. Finally, the Lorathi spoke.

"When did a man's brother learn to hate him so much?"

Gaelon could not deny that it was true. He hated his brother as much as he loved him. His gaze was unblinking as he spoke.

"When you abandoned your vows and me with so little thought in order to become someone who was loved."

_They had both agreed to the sacrifice; had lived by a creed. They had taken vows together, each choosing the same life. They had bled for one another and for their god. It was not always easy to live with the choice, but they had made a promise to each other, unspoken though it was, and that had meant something._

_It had to him, at least._

Jaqen inclined his head slightly, a courteous gesture of acknowledgment. His brother made no such gesture in return, but merely turned on his heel and left the room.

* * *

The Lorathi assassin had been five days gone when the principal elder called the handsome master to him.

"I sent a man to White Harbor more than two moons past," Tyto began.

"I recall."

"I wish for you to join him."

"You're sending me west?"

"This is a holy undertaking. This is the most important work we have ever done," the elder replied, an unexpected gravity weighing his usually restrained voice. "Did you have any doubt that I would?"

Gaelon shrugged, the mild gesture belying the pin pricks of excitement that stirred within him. _She would be so close._

The handsome man pushed that thought aside and did not allow himself to question his desire to see the girl again. It would not be wise to think too deeply on it, at least not with his master an arm's length away.

_The true seeing, indeed._

"You are like to cross paths with your brother again," Tyto was saying, and Gaelon could tell he meant the Lorathi. "When you do, I trust that you will remember where your loyalties should lie."

The younger assassin bowed his head in acknowledgment and then said, "You sound as if you do not believe that _he_ will remember where his loyalties should lie."

The elder did not mince words.

"No," Tyto said. "He is lost to us."

* * *

She sparred with her new blades, careful not to cut her brother. There were training swords in the hold, but she wished to get the feel of her new weapons. The girl and her brother usually waited until the bulk of the day's work was done and the crew had cleared the deck, not wishing to endanger the men with their training, but still, the space was cramped. They had just finished the exercise, swords safely dangling from their belts now, and the girl had accepted an offering (in the form of a piece of ripe fruit) from Captain Terys' son, her old friend Denyo. The Braavosi had been watching Arya's deadly dance from a safe vantage point, his keen gaze drinking in her graceful movements. Giving Denyo an appreciative smile and taking a bite of his gift, the girl once again complained of how dodging the masts and stepping over coiled ropes impeded her footwork. The sight of her grousing as sticky juice ran down her chin was too much for her partner. The Bear laughed and she continued with her snack.

"This may actually benefit you, sister," the Lyseni assassin said with a snicker.

" _Me?_ "

"Who knows if you shall be called upon to fight in close quarters. The ship allows us the perfect opportunity to develop those tactics."

"Don't you mean it will benefit _us_ then?"

The Bear smiled broadly and she could tell a jape was coming.

"Well, as _I_ am a master and you have not taken vows, it falls to me to teach you."

He ducked to avoid the half-eaten peach she threw at his head. It sailed over the railing and dropped to the depths below.

"As if you could ever be _my_ master!" she cried, rushing at him. She chased him around the deck, leaping over obstacles and finally catching the large boy at her cabin door.

The Bear panted, "I yield! I yield!" as the girl slammed him into the wall of her cabin's exterior.

"You made me waste my peach!" she growled, delivering a halfhearted smack to the side of his head.

"You shouldn't have thrown it!" he countered. "You have to learn to control your temper better. You're not ruling your face."

"You really _do_ think you're my master!"

"Oh, no," the Lyseni pronounced with mock gravity. "I would never presume that someone as lowly as me could possibly have anything to teach the great Cat!"

She cursed at him and then narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips, trying to maintain her resentment as her brother chuckled. It was too difficult to remain angry with him and so she gave up.

"The order has nothing left to teach me," she said bitterly after his laughter and her scowl abated.

"No, I know." He lifted his hand to her face and drew her head against his broad chest for a moment. The gesture was half comfort, half apology. Then tension bled out of the girl and she relaxed against her brother. She then allowed him to lead her up the stairs to the quarterdeck where he leaned on the rail, staring off into the distance. They stood in silence, gazing out over the ship's railing toward the sunset. As the sky began to glow persimmon, the boy looked over at the Cat, watching her watch the sea. If she noted his observance, she gave no indication. The sinking sun lit her face and rendered her eyes a molten silver. The sight of it fairly robbed him of his breath.

They had been out to sea for a fortnight and he had had ample time to study her eyes. Sometimes he thought he could see all the sorrow in the world reflected back in the grey of them (grey like ashes drifted down from a funeral pyre; grey like the storm they saw brewing in the distance two days past; grey like the mood that had seized him when he thought of _her_ , that girl he had loved too much for his own good, or hers) but he knew she could not hold all the world's sorrow; it was not possible, for some of it was his, and belonged only to him. Other times, he thought he merely saw the endlessness of the sea which surrounded them, deep and bottomless and sometimes turbulent (but always a little frightening). Today, he saw what looked like hope; some rekindling of her spirit. It was the first time since her trial that she seemed to allow something other than grief or worry or rage to the forefront of her mind.

Thinking it best to broach the subject they must discuss while she seemed in a receptive mood, the Lyseni drew in a great breath.

"Say it," she commanded tersely before he had uttered a word.

"Sister?"

"It's obvious that you've wanted to talk about something for days. So just say it."

He shook his head and looked out toward the horizon, tracing the path her eyes followed to see the sky slowly turning purple.

"I'd like for you to talk with the Rat."

"No."

"It's been a fortnight, Cat. You can't..."

" _No_."

The Bear sighed.

"It's not just this journey, you know. We aren't leaving you once we cross the Narrow Sea," the boy pointed out. "We are charged with returning you to Winterfell."

The girl said nothing and he turned to look at her. He was surprised to see that instead of molten silver, her eyes appeared as hard, grey ice in the dying light.

"You'll return me to Winterfell, I have no doubt. To the waiting arms of whichever usurping lord now occupies my home," she finally responded.

" _No_ ," he insisted. "I would never surrender you to anyone you did not wish. But that is not the point."

"Then please," the girl spat, "get to your _point,_ brother!"

"Another moon on the seas, who knows how many moons trudging toward the North... We have to _depend_ on one another. We can't do that if you won't even acknowledge that he exists."

"He avoids me even more aggressively than I avoid him. Why are you talking to _me_ about this?"

"Because you're the smart one."

"Flattery will not sway me."

"Then... because as stubborn as you are, he is _more so_ and I cannot make him see reason!"

"And you think I can?" she scoffed.

"Yes. Because you are the _smart one."_

* * *

Her sleep was usually dreamless on the ship. She had come to believe that it was not possible to dream while crossing the water, but that night, she found herself on land once again. She was staring at a hill as the sun sank slowly below it, and there were figures atop it, silhouetted by the dying light. One was a dragon, huge, monstrous, emanating a seething menace which she could feel even at this distance. The other, a man, and though he was little more than a black shadow to her eye, she knew him.

_My love, my love, my love._

Fear gripped her heart as the man moved slowly toward the beast, approaching it steadily, one hand stretched out before him. She opened her mouth to scream, to warn him, to say _No! No! No!_ But no sound came. And then it was too late. The black beast drew itself up, its unholy scream piercing her ears and making the ground tremble beneath her feet and then its great mouth opened, showing rows of razor teeth as black as the rest of the scene before her. Before the man could turn, fire rained down on him in a blast so powerful that the tree behind him was reduced to embers in a second. She lost sight of the man, her king. She knew he must have been turned to ash as well, the greatest force of the dragon's breath having been directed at his head. But then, the dragon withdrew a step and the blasting fire stopped and amidst the charred ground and smoke, she saw him, standing just as he had been before, unwavering, his unburnt hand still outstretched.

Slowly, he turned to face her, and though she could make out no features with the sun at his back and she was too far away to hear his words, it seemed that he was beckoning to her.

* * *

Arya ruminated for two days, but finally, chastened by the Bear's words and softened by his pleading, she gave in and approached the Westerosi assassin.

"Why do you hate me so much?" she demanded by way of greeting.

The boy's too-close eyes became hard with his contempt and an ugly sneer curled his lips, pulling them back from his teeth. He had never looked more like a rat than he did just then. He looked absolutely feral.

" _Alright, then_ ," the Rat bit out slowly, moving menacingly toward her. When his toes came to rest less than half a foot from her own, he bent his pinched face down so that their noses were a spare few inches apart. " _I'll tell you exactly why I hate you so much._ "

* * *

_**Song for Someone-**_ U2

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading, following, bookmarking, and commenting on this story. It's been a long haul and I appreciate your attention. My idea for this tale is that it will be told in three parts. Now that part 1 is complete, I will focus on adding to the "Morpheum" side-project and beginning part 2, "The Grey Daughter". I cannot tell you the title for part 3, because it would be a spoiler! ;-)


	61. The Grey Daughter, Chapter 1 Preview

 

_Welcome to the new age..._

* * *

A slender girl stood on the deck of a Braavosi ship, its gentle rocking at odds with the violence of what boiled inside of her. She was cloaked in the damp of the predawn mists and though her grey eyes appeared to pierce the gloom of the hour before sunrise, what occupied her mind was nothing which could be spied upon the dark and distant shore. Her cool fingers wrapped delicately over the railing as she listened to the lapping of the black waters against the wooden hull below her feet. She was perfectly silent and perfectly still, but she was not lulled.

And she was not at peace.

The vessel, a trading galleas with the elegant name of _Titan's Daughter,_ had been her home for a seemingly immeasurable stretch of days and nights; days filled with a particular type of dancing (the type which required Valyrian steel in her hand and could be good sport but could just as easily be deadly); days of shouldering some of the work commonly done by men who made up a ship's crew (when she grew too bored or too consumed by her own troubled thoughts to remain inert, lest she go mad); days spent trading bawdy insults in three languages with the men who surrounded her (and, early on, trading blows when the men grew too bold for her liking. The crew had learned rather quickly what they could and could not say to Arya Stark). The days could be tiring, or fruitful, or frustrating, or monotonous in turn. The girl could no longer recall how many days it had been since she had spent time staring at anything other than a vast expanse of rolling, green water, with nothing but sea and sky to answer her gaze.

But if the days were often a trial, then the nights were always an affliction; an homage to suffering and misery and torment; a tribute to pain.

For her nights were filled with dreams of wolves she had abandoned and solemn fathers admonishing her to _come home_ when she had no home (when she felt herself to be an exile who belonged nowhere). Her dreams were plagued by a silver king she had never met yet somehow knew, and by a dark knight she had once known but who was now a stranger (and whose sincere blue eyes and smiling face made her think only of abandonment and rejection). She was caught between fiery dragon's breath and icy crypts; she cried out for those lost to her, begging their forgiveness; begging for their return. Her nights were blessed and cursed with dreams of a voice whispering to her in Lorathi ( _by all the gods, I am yours_ ), and a particular set of piercing, bronze eyes (bronze eyes that made her chest ache to gaze upon, the pain of it often waking her from deep sleep with a start). Bleeding one into the next without respite, hers were agonizing, endless nights.

Nights filled with silent tears scrubbed away roughly with small, tight fists.

Nights filled with quiet vows to avenge those who had been taken from her.

Nights filled with choking down grief and hate, storing them up and saving them for later.

Nights spent pacing the decks of _Titan's Daughter_ when she could no longer stand to keep to her bed, snarling into the darkness as stinging winds and roiling seas coarsened her hair with salt.

Days were for sparring and plotting; working and improving and tiring oneself to the point that thought and contemplation finally failed. Days were for distraction. Nights, though... Nights were for mourning. Nights were for whispering names and calling it _prayer._ Nights were for malice and resolve.

And nights were for regret.

Regret for leaving Nymeria in the wilderness with stern words and some precisely aimed rocks.

Regret for her own inability to save her father from a fate he did not deserve.

Regret for not fleeing the dim halls of the House of Black and White sooner, as she had been urged, and for not taking Jaqen with her when she did.

_Jaqen._

At the thought of _him,_ the girl closed her eyes and breathed out slowly; raggedly.

A voice broke her reverie.

"Will you leave us today, Salty?" asked the captain's son from just behind her. He spoke in the common tongue, heavily accented by his native Braavosi.

Arya continued staring into the gloom, her eyes tracing the faint, shadowy outlines of the trees in the distance. _Saltpans._ It was fitting that they had come back here. After a moment, she answered Denyo, her voice soft but sure.

"I will."

The boy moved to stand next to her, his shoulder close enough that she could feel the warmth he emanated but not close enough to brush against her. He would not be so daring. Even with the recklessness so emblematic of youth, Denyo was not foolhardy. One did not reach out his hand to pet a feral wolf, no matter how beautiful the beast.

"And shall we ever meet again?" This he asked her in Braavosi, his tone wistful. His ability to speak the common tongue was rudimentary at best, though Arya had tried at various points during their journey over the Narrow Sea to help the captain's son improve. The girl turned her head and regarded the boy's profile. He was gazing out into the same grey that she had been contemplating when he approached her. She answered him in his native tongue, her own accent flawless.

"There are things I must do here first, but when my duty is done, I will return to Braavos. Perhaps when that time comes, it will once again be you who carries me back over the sea." She paused for a moment. "If the Many-Faced god wills it," she added. "I think I should like that, if it was you."

"But isn't this your home?" Denyo asked, sounding confused. "Why would you wish to return to Braavos?"

At her friend's question, Arya's mind filled with the images of two men, two sides of an iron coin, just as different, and just as connected. Two men—Faceless masters, both. One man, she longed for with all that was within her. The other, she would kill, fueled by the hatred which burned like wildfire in her gut.

Jaqen H'ghar and the Kindly Man.

Black and white.

Love and hate.

_Why would you wish to return to Braavos?_

"Because," the girl replied, her voice becoming harder as she spoke, "there is someone I must find, and there is a debt that I must pay."

Her tone prevented her friend from questioning her further. Though he had known her when she was little more than a half-starved stowaway just shy of her twelfth nameday and though he now found her to be wholly magnificent and wild and thrilling to be around, he did not forget how her passage was paid and he did not pretend that her two companions were simple travelers. Denyo was a man of Braavos, and with that distinction came a certain understanding about the mysterious order from which the girl had recently emerged. There were perhaps things he did not truly wish to know and things about which it was simply better not to ask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a snippet of chapter 1 of The Grey Daughter. I hope to finish polishing the rest of the chapter for posting this week (barring unforeseen circumstances), but in the mean time, I hope you enjoy this little "sneak peek." Sorry I couldn't give you any of the "meat" of the chapter (why the Rat hates Arya), but that section just wasn't ready yet. Still, I wanted everyone who has been so kind as to read and comment and follow The Assassin's Apprentice to know that part 2 is on the way!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Morpheum](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4116964) by [Winterlyn_Dow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterlyn_Dow/pseuds/Winterlyn_Dow)




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